1820
People :
Author : William Godwin
Tags : united states, geometrical ratio, human beings, north america, south america, human life, political economy, old world, human creatures, malthus's doctrine.
Sections (TOC) :
• Preface
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• Book 1, Chapter 01 : Introduction
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• Book 1, Chapter 02 : Survey of the Creation from Natural History
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• Book 1, Chapter 03 : General Views as to the Alleged Increase of Mankind
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• Book 1, Chapter 04 : General View of the Arguments Against the Increase of Mankind
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• Book 1, Chapter 05 : Numbers of Mankind in Ancient and Modern Times
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• Book 1, Chapter 06 : Illustrations from the History of China
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• Book 1, Chapter 07 : India
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• Book 1, Chapter 08 : South America
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• Book 1, Chapter 09 : Paraguay
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• Book 1, Chapter 10 : Sparta
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• Book 1, Chapter 11 : Rome
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• Book 1, Chapter 12 : Miscellaneous Observations
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• Book 1, Chapter 13 : Views of Man and Society which Result from the Preceding Facts
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• Book 2, Chapter 01 : Proofs and Authorities for the Doctrine the Essay on Population
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• Book 2, Chapter 02 : Animadversions on Mr. Malthus's Authorities
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• Book 2, Chapter 03 : Principles Respecting the Increase or Decrease of the Numbers of Mankind
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• Book 2, Chapter 04 : Accounts which are given of the Population of Sweden
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• Book 2, Chapter 05 : Inferences Suggested by the Accounts of Sweden
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• Book 2, Chapter 06 : Observations on the Swedish Tables Continued
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• Book 2, Chapter 07 : Recapitulation of the Evidence of the Swedish Tables
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• Book 2, Chapter 08 : Population of Other Countries in Europe Considered
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• Book 2, Chapter 09 : Principles Respecting the Increase or Decrease of the Numbers of Mankind Resumed
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• Book 2, Chapter 10 : Of the Population of England and Wales
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• Book 2, Chapter 11 : Proofs of the Geometrical Ratio from the Phenomenon of a Pestilence
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• Book 2, Appendix : Tables Of The American Census
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• Book 3, Chapter 01 : Futility of Mr. Malthus's Doctrine Respecting the Checks on Population
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• Book 3, Chapter 02 : Of Deaths and the Rate of Human Mortality
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• Book 3, Chapter 03 : Attempt towards a Rational Theory of the Checks on Population
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• Book 3, Chapter 04 : Attempt towards a Rational Theory of the Checks on Population Continued
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• Book 2, Chapter 12 : Dissertation On The Ratios Of Increase In Population, And In The Means Of Subsistence, By Mr. David Booth
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Sections (Content) :
• Preface
It happens to men sometimes, where they had it in their thoughts to set forward and advance some mighty benefit to their fellow creatures, not merely to fail in giving substance and efficacy to the sentiment that animated them, but also to realize and bring on some injury to the party they purposed to serve. Such is my case, if the speculations that have now been current for nearly twenty years, and which had scarcely been heard of before, are to be henceforth admitted, as forming an essential branch of the science of politics.
When I wrote my Inquiry concerning Political Justice, I flattered myself that there was no mean probability that I should render an important service to mankind. I had warmed my mind with all that was great and illustrious in the republics of Greece and Rome, which had been favorite subjects of meditation with me, almost from my infancy. I became further animated by the spectacle of the Revolutions of America and France, the former of which commenced when I was just twenty years of age, [though I never approved of the mode in which the latter was effected, and the excesses which to a certain degree marked its very beginning] and by the speculations, which in England, and other parts of Europe, among learned men and philosophers, preceded, and contributed to, and have in some measure attended upon, and accompanied, every step of these events. I thought it was possible to collect whatever existed that was best and most liberal in the science of politics, to condense it, to arrange it more into a system, and to carry it somewhat farther, than had been done by any preceding writer.
The book I produced seemed for some time fully to answer in its effects the most sanguine expectations I had conceived from it. I could not complain that it "fell dead-born from the press," or that it did not awaken a considerable curiosity among my countrymen. I was never weak enough to suppose, that it would immediately sweep away all error before it, like a mighty influx of the waves of the ocean. I hailed the opposition it encountered, direct and indirect, argumentative and scurrilous, as a symptom (we will suppose, not altogether unequivocal) of the result I so earnestly desired. Among other phenomena of the kind, I hailed the attack of Mr. Malthus. I believed, that the Essay on Population, like other erroneous and exaggerated representations of things, would soon find its own level.
In this I have been hitherto disappointed. It would be easy to assign the causes of my disappointment; the degree in which, by the necessity of the case, the theory of this writer flattered the vises and corruption of the rich and great, and the eager patronage it might very naturally be expected to obtain from them: but this makes no part of what it is my purpose to say. Finding therefore, that whatever arguments have been produced against it by others, it still holds on its prosperous career, and has not long since appeared in the impressive array of a Fifth Edition, I cannot be contented to go out of the world, without attempting to put into a permanent form what has occurred to me on the subject. I was sometimes idle enough to suppose, that I had done my part, in producing the book that had given occasion to Mr. Malthus's Essaya, and that I might safely leave the comparatively easy task, as it seemed, of demolishing the "Principle of Population," to some one of the men who have risen to maturity since I produced my most considerable performance. But I can refrain no longer. "I will also answer my part; I likewise will shew my opinion: for I am full of matter; and the spirit within me constraineth me."
This is a task in which I am the more bound to engage, because, as I have said, if the dogmas which are now afloat on the subject of population are to become permanent, I have, instead of contributing as I desired to the improvement of society, become, very unintentionally, the occasion of placing a bar upon all improvements to come, and bringing into discredit all improvements that are past. If Mr. Malthus's way of reasoning only tended to the overthrow of what many will call "the visionary speculations" of the Inquiry concerning Political Justice, the case would have been different. I might have gone to my grave with the disgrace, to whatever that might amount, of having erected castles in the air, for the benefit, not of myself, but of my species, and of then seeing them battered to pieces before my face. But I cannot consent to close my eyes for ever, with the judgment, as the matter now seems to stand, recorded on my tomb, that, in attempting one further advance in the route of improvement, I should have brought on the destruction of all that Solon, and Plato, and Montesquieu, and Sidney, in ancient times, and in a former age, had seemed to have effected for the redemption and the elevation of mankind.
It is not a little extraordinary, that Mr. Malthus's book should now have been twenty years before the public, without any one, so far as I know, having attempted a refutation of his main principle. It was easy for men of a generous temper to vent their horror at the revolting nature of the conclusions he drew from his principle; and this is nearly all that has been done. That principle is delivered by him in the most concise and summary manner. He says, that he "considered it as established in the first six pages. The American increase was related [in three lines]; and the geometrical ratio was provedb." Now, it stands out broadly to the common sense of mankind, that this was proving nothing. Population, and the descent, and increase or otherwise, of one generation of mankind after another, is not a subject of such wonderful simplicity, as to be thus established. It is in reality the complexity and thorniness of the question, that have had the effect of silencing Mr. Malthus's adversaries respecting it. They seem with one consent to have shrunk from a topic, which required so much patient investigation. In the midst of this general desertion of the public interest, I have ventured to place myself in the breach. With what success it is for others to judge.
It may seem strange, that what was so summarily stated, and successfully asserted, by Mr. Malthus, should require so much research and labor to overthrow. The Essay on Population has set up a naked assertion; no more. I might have made a contradictory assertion ; and, equitably speaking, the matter was balanced, and what Mr. Malthus bad written ought to go for nothing. But this would not have been the case. "Possession," says the old proverb, "is nine points of the law;" and the Essay on Population bad gotten possession of the public mind. This author entered on a desert land, and, like the first discoverers of countries, set up a symbol of occupation, and without further ceremony said, "It is mine." His task was easy: he gave the word; his vessel was launched, and his voyage completed. Like Cymochles in the Fairy Queen, he could say,
My wandering ship I row,
That knows her port, and thither sails by aim ;
Ne care, ne fear I, how the wind do blow ;
Both swift and slow alike do serve my turn.
But the task in which I have engaged has been of a different sort. It was necessary that my advances should be slow, and my forces firm. It was mine, not only to dislodge the usurperfrom his fastnesses and retreats; but further, by patient exertions, and employing the most solid materials, to build up a Pharos, that the sincere enquirer might no longer wander in the dark, arid be liable to be guided by the first daring adventurer that would lead him into the paths of error and destruction.
I beg leave to repeat one passage here from the ensuing volume,c as containing a thought very proper to be presented to the reader in the outset of the inquiry. "If America had never been discovered, the geometrical ratio, as applied to the multiplication of mankind, would never have been known. If the British colonies had never been planted, Mr. Malthus would never have written. The human species might have perished of a long old age, a fate to which perhaps all sublunary things are subject at last, without one statesman or one legislator, through myriads of centuries, having suspected this dangerous tendency to increase, 'in comparison with which human institutions, however they may appear to be causes of much mischief to society, are mere feathersd.'"
In the following pages I confine myself strictly to Mr. Malthus's book, and the question which he has brought under consideration. My bitterest enemy will hardly be able to find in this volume the author of the Inquiry concerning Political Justice. I have scarcely allowed myself to recollect the beautiful visions (if they shall turn out to be visions), which enchanted my soul, and animated my pen, while writing that work. I conceived that any distinct reference to what is there treated of, would be foreign to the subject which is now before me. The investigation of the power of increase in the numbers of mankind, must be interesting to every one to whom the human species and human society appear to be matters of serious concern: and I should have thought that I was guilty of a sort of treason against that interest, if I had unnecessarily obtruded into the discussion any thing that could shock the prejudices, or insult the views, of those whose conceptions of political truth mighty be most different from my own.
I am certainly very sorry that I was not sooner in possession of Mr. Malthus's calculation for peopling the whole visible universe with human beings at the rate of four men to every square yard, contained in his Principles of Political Economye. A considerable portion of my work was printed, before the appearance of that volume. Several passages in these sheets will read comparatively flat and tame, for went of the assistance of this happy reductio ad absurdum from the pen of the author.
I cannot close these few pages of Preface, without testifying my obligations to one friend in particular, Mr. David Booth, formerly of Newburgh in the county of Fife, now of London. Without the encouragement and pressing instances of this gentleman my work would never have been begun; and the main argument of the Second Book is of his suggesting. But indeed the hints and materials for illustration I have derived from his conversation are innumerable; and his mathematical skill assisted my investigations, in points in which my habits for many years, were least favorable to my undertaking.--It is further necessary I should add, that Mr. Booth has scarcely in any instance inspected my sheets, and that therefore I only am responsible for any errors they may contain.
The reader will find, annexed to the end of the Second Book, a Dissertation on the Ratios of Increase in Population, and in the Means of Subsistence, which that gentleman had the goodness to supply to me.
This is all that is necessary for me to say in the way of Preface. Except that I feel prompted to make my apology in this place, if I shall appear any where to have been hurried into undue warmth. I know how easily this sin is accustomed to beset all controversial writers. I hold Mr. Malthus in all due respect, at the same time that I willingly plead guilty to the charge of regarding his doctrines with inexpressible abborrence. I fully admit however the good intentions of the author of the Essay on Population, and cheerfully seize this occasion to testify my belief in his honorable character, and his unblemished manners.
LONDON,
October 21, 1820.
• Book 1, Chapter 01 : Introduction
Mr. Malthus has published what he calls an Essay on the Principle of Population, by which he undertakes to annul every thing that had previously been received, respecting the views that it is incumbent upon those who preside over political society to cherish, and the measures that may conduce to the happiness of mankind. His theory is evidently founded upon nothing. He says, that "population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio.a"
If we ask why we are to believe this, he answers that, "in the northern states of America, the population has been found so to double itself for above a century and a half successively.b" All this he delivers in an oraculous manner. He neither proves nor attempts to prove what he asserts. If Mr. Malthus has taken a right view of the question, it is to be hoped that some author will hereafter arise, who will go into the subject and shew that it is so.
Mr. Malthus having laid down a theory in this dogmatic manner, a sort of proceeding wholly unworthy of a reflecting nation or an enlightened age, it is time in reality that some one should sweep away this house of cards, and endeavor to ascertain whether any thing is certainly known on the subject.
This is the design and the scheme of the present volume I shall make no dogmatic assertions ; or, at least I am sure I will make none respecting the proposition or propositions which form the basis of the subject. I shall call upon my reader for no implicit faith. I shall lay down no positions authoritatively, and leave him to seek for evidence, elsewhere, and as he can, by which they may be established. All that I deliver shall be accompanied by its proofs. My purpose is to engage in a train of patient investigation, and to lay before every one who will go along with me, the facts which satisfy my mind on the subject, and which I am desirous should convey similar satisfaction to the minds of others.
The consequence is, that I, the first, as far as I know, of any English writer in the present century, shall have really gone into the question of population. If what I shall deliver is correct, some foundation will be laid, and the principle will begin to be understood. If what I allege as fact shall be found to be otherwise, or the conclusions I draw from my facts do not truly follow from them, I shall have set before other enquirers evidence that they may scan, and arguments that they may refute. I simply undertake to open the door for the gratification of the curious, or, more properly speaking, of those who feel an interest in the honor and happiness of the human species, which hitherto in this respect has been shut. Conscious how little as yet is known on the subject, I attempt no more than to delineate Outlines of the Doctrine of Population.
The first point then that I have to examine, and which will form the subject of Three of the Six Books into which my treatise is divided, is respecting the Power of Increase in the Numbers of the Human Species, and the Limitations of that Power. This question, precisely speaking, is the topic of the Second Book only: though I have thought proper to prefix in a First Book a view of the numbers of mankind in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America, in ancient and modern times, where population has generally been supposed not to increase; and in another [the Fourth] to subjoin a view of the United States of North America in this particular, where from some cause or other the population has multiplied exceedingly.
The result of our investigations into the subject of population, I believe, will afford some presumption that there is in the constitution of the human species a power, absolutely speaking, of increasing its numbers. Mr. Malthus says; that the power is equal to the multiplication of mankind by a doubling every twenty-five years, that is, to an increase for ever in a geometrical series, of which the exponent is 2:--a multiplication, which it is difficult for human imagination, or (as I should have thought) for human credulity to follow: and therefore his theory must demand the most tremendous checks [their names in the Essay on Population are vise and misery] to keep the power in that state of neutrality, in which it is perhaps in almost all cases to be found in Europe. I think I shall be able to make out that the power of increase in the numbers of the human species is extremely small. But, be that as it may, it must be exceedingly interesting to assign the Causes by which this Power is Restrained from producing any absolute multiplication, from century to century, in those many countries where population appears to be at a stand: and I have accordingly endeavored to take the question out of the occult and mystical state in which Mr. Malthus has left it. This disquisition forms the subject of my Third Book; as it was necessary to give it precedence over the examination of the population of the United States, that we might be the better enabled to see, how far the causes which keep down population are peculiar to us, and how far they extend their agency to North America.
Such is the outline of the most essential parts of the following work; and here I might perhaps without impropriety have put an end to my labors. But, as Mr. Malthus has taken occasion to deliver many positions respecting subsistence, and various other points of political economy, I have thought it might not be useless to follow him into these topics.
The question of subsistence indeed Mr. Malthus has made an essential member of his system, having stated the power of increase in the numbers of mankind as equal to a doubling every twenty-five years for ever in geometrical series, and the utmost power of increase in the means of subsistence as reaching only to a perpetual addition of its own quantity in similar periods, or a progression in arithmetical series. Thus,
| Population | 1 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 16 | 32 | 64 | 128 | 256 |
| Subsistence | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
I have therefore devoted my Fifth Book to the consideration of the Means which the Earth Affords for the Subsistence of Man.
The topic I have reserved for my Sixth Book is, at least to my apprehension, in no way less interesting than the question of Subsistence. Dr. Franklin and other writers who have attributed to the human species a power of rapidly multiplying their numbers, have either foreseen no mischief to arise from this germ of multiplication, or none but what was exceedingly remote. It is otherwise with Mr. Malthus. The geometrical ratio is every where with him a practical principle, and entitled to the most vigilant and unremitted attention of mankind. He has deduced from this consideration several moral and political maxims, which he enjoins it upon the governors of the world to attend to. I am persuaded that the elements of our author's theory are unsound, and that therefore his conclusions must follow the fate of the principle on which they are founded. But I should have left my undertaking imperfect, if I did not proceed to expose these maxims; thus, in the first place, setting the system of the Essay on Population and its practical merits in the full light of day; and, in the second, holding up for the instruction of those who may come after, an example of the monstrous errors into which a writer may be expected to fall, who shall allow himself, upon a gratuitous and wholly unproved assumption, to build a system of legislation, and determine the destiny of all his fellow-creatures. An examination of the Moral and Political Maxims Inculcated in the Essay on Population therefore constitutes the subject of my Sixth Book.
I might indeed have written a treatise in which I should have endeavored to trace the outlines of the subject of population, without adverting to Mr. Malthus. But, in the first place it was gratifying to me to name an author, who, however false and groundless his theories appear to me, has had the merit of successfully drawing the attention of the public to the subject. I think it but fair, so far as depends upon me, that his name should be preserved, whatever becomes of the volumes he has written. If any benefit shall arise from the discussion of the Doctrine of Population, there is a propriety in recollecting the person by whose writings the question has been set afloat, though he has not discussed. And, in the second place, I know that the attention of the majority of readers is best secured by the appearance of a contention. If I had delivered the speculations of the following pages in a form severely scientific, and still more if I had written my book without Mr. Malthus's going before me, I should have appeared to multitudes to be elaborately explaining what was too clear for an argument, and could not have expected to excite an interest, to which under the present circumstances, if I have done any thing effectually on the subject, I may be thought reasonably entitled.
• Book 1, Chapter 02 : Survey of the Creation from Natural History
Previously to our entering directly on the subject before us, it will probably be found not wholly unworthy of attention to recollect, in how different a way the multiplication of the human species has ordinarily been regarded, by writers whose purpose it was to survey the various classes of existence that form the subject of natural history, and who were satisfied to discover "the wisdom of God in the works of creation," from the ideas expressed by Mr. Malthus. The following is the manner in which the subject is stated by Goldsmith, one of the latest of the number, in his History of the Earth and Animated Nature.
"We may observe, that that generation is the most complete, in which the fewest animals are produced : Nature, by attending to the production of one at a time, seems to exert all her efforts in bringing it to perfection : but, where this attention is divided, the animals so produced come into the world with partial advantages. In this manner twins are never, at least while infants, so large or strong as those that come singly into the world; each having, in some measure, robbed the other of its right; as that support which Nature meant for one, has been prodigally divided.
"In this manner, as those animals are the best that are produced singly, so we find that the noblest animals are ever the least fruitful. These are seen usually to bring forth but one at a time, and to place all their attention upon that alone. On the other hand, all the oviparous kinds produce in amazing plenty; and even the lower tribes of the viviparous animals increase in a seeming proportion to their minuteness and imperfection. Nature seems lavish of life in the lower orders of creation ; and, as if she meant them entirely for the use of the nobler races, she appears to have bestowed greater pains in multiplying the number, than in completing this kind. In this manner, while the elephant and the horse bring forth but one at a time, the spider and the beetle are seen to produce a thousand: and even among the smaller quadrupeds, all the inferior kinds are extremely fertile; any one of these being found, in a very few months, to become the parent of a numerous progeny.
"In this manner therefore the smallest animals multiply in the greatest proportion; and we have reason to thank Providence, that the most formidable animals are the least fruitful. Had the lion and the tiger the same degree of fecundity with the rabbit or the rat, all the arts of man would be unable to oppose these fierce invaders, and we should soon perceive them be. come the tyrants of those who claim the lordship of the creation. But Heaven, in this respect, has wisely consulted the advantage of all. It has opposed to man only such enemies, as he has art and strength to conquer; and, as large animals require proportional supplies, nature was unwilling to give new life, where it in some measure denied the necessary means of subsistence.
"In consequence of this pre-established order, the animals that are endowed with the most perfect methods of generation, and bring forth but one at a time, seldom begin to procreate, till they have almost acquired their full growth. On the other hand, those which bring forth many, engender before they have arrived at half their natural size. The horse and the bull come almost to perfection before they begin to generate; the hog and the rabbit scarcely leave the teat before they become parents themselves. In whatever light therefore we consider this subject, we shall find that all creatures approach most to perfection, whose generation most nearly resembles that of man. The reptile produced from cutting, is but one degree above the vegetable. The animal produced from the egg, is a step higher in the scale of existence: that class of animals which are brought forth alive, are still more exalted. Of these, such as bring forth one at a time are the most complete; and foremost of these stands man, the great master of all, who seems to have united the perfections of all the rest in his formationa."
• Book 1, Chapter 03 : General Views as to the Alleged Increase of Mankind
To take a just view of any subject, one rule that is extremely worthy of our attention is, that we should get to a proper distance from it. The stranger to whom we would convey an adequate image of the city of London, we immediately lead to the top of St. Paul's Church. And, if I may introduce an allusion to the records of the Christian religion, the devil took our Savior "up into an exceeding high mountain," when he would "shew him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them."
Mr. Malthus has taken his stand upon the reports of Dr. Franklin, and Dr. Ezra Styles. He repairs with them to the northern parts of the United States of America, and there he sees, or thinks he sees, "the population doubling itself, for above a century and a half successively, in less than twenty-five years," and that "from procreation onlya." He does not discover an ample population even in this, his favorite country. Far from it. The reason why the population goes on so rapidly in North America is, according to him, because there is "ample room and verge enough" for almost all the population that can be poured into it. He sees, in his prophetic conception, that country, some centuries hence, full of human inhabitants, even to overflowing, and groaning under the multitude of the tribes shall dwell in it.
Would it not have been fairer to have taken before him the globe of earth at one view, and from thence to have deduced the true "Principle of Population," and the policy that ought to direct the measures of those who govern the world?
How long the race of man has subsisted, unless we derive our opinions on the subject from the light of revelation, no man knows. The Chinese, and the people of Indostan, carry back their chronology through millions of years. Even if we refer to the Bible, the Hebrew text, and the Samaritan which is perhaps of equal authority, differ most considerably and fundamentally from each other. But Mr. Malthus is of opinion, that, in reasoning on subjects of political economy, we are bound to regulate our ideas by statistical reports, and tables that have been scientifically formed by proficients in that study, and has accordingly confined himself to these.
But, though we know not how long the human race has existed, nor how extensive a period it has had to multiply itself in, we are able to form some rude notions respecting its present state. It has by some persons been made an objection to the Christian religion, that it has not become universal. It would perhaps be fairer, to make it an objection to the "Principle of Population," as laid down by Mr. Malthus, that the earth is not peopled.
If I were to say that the globe would maintain twenty times its present inhabitants, or, in other words, that for every human creature now called into existence, twenty might exist in a state of greater plenty and happiness than with our small number we do at present, I should find no one timid and saturnine enough to contradict me. In fact, he must be a literal and most uninventive speculator, who would attempt to set bounds to the physical powers of the earth to supply the means of human subsistence.
The first thing therefore that would occur to him who should survey "all the kingdoms of the earth," and the state of their population, would be the thinness of their numbers, and the multitude and extent of their waste and desolate places. If his heart abounded with "the milk of human kindness," he would not fail to contrast the present state of the globe with its possible state; he would see his species as a little remnant widely scattered over a fruitful and prolific surface, and would weep to think that the kindly and gracious qualities of our mother earth were turned to so little account. If he were more of a sober and reasoning, than of a tender and passionate temper, perhaps he would not weep, but I should think he would set himself seriously to inquire, how the populousness of nations might be increased, and the different regions of the globe replenished with a numerous and happy race.
Dr. Paley's observations on this head are peculiarly to the purpose. "The quantity of happiness," he says, "in any given district, although it is possible it may be increased, the number of inhabitants remaining the same, is chiefly and most naturally affected by alteration of the numbers: consequently, the decay of population is the greatest evil that a state can suffer; and the improvement of it is the object, which ought in all countries to be aimed at, in preference to every other political purpose whatsoever b."
Such has been the doctrine, I believe, of every enlightened politician and legislator since the world began. But Mr. Malthus has placed this subject in a new light. He thinks that there is a possibility that the globe of earth may at some time or other contain more human inhabitants than it can subsist; and he has therefore written a book, the direct tendency of which is to keep down the numbers of mankind. He has no consideration for the millions and millions of men, who might be conceived as called into existence, and made joint partakers with us in such happiness as a sublunary existence, with liberty and improvement, might impart; but, for the sake of a future possibility, would shut against them once for all the door of existence.
He says indeed, "The difficulty, so far from being remote, is imminent and immediate. At every period during the progress of cultivation, from the present moment to the time when the whole earth was become like a garden, the distress for want of food would be constantly pressing on all mankindc." He adds it is true in this place, "if they were equal." But these words are plainly unnecessary, since it is almost the sole purpose of his book to shew, that, in all old established countries, "the population is always pressing hard against the means of subsistence."
This however--I mean the distress that must always accompany us in every step of our progress--is so palpably untrue, that I am astonished that any man should have been induced by the love of paradox, and the desire to divulge something new, to make the assertion. There is no principle respecting man and society more certain, than that every man in a civilized state is endowed with the physical power of producing more than shall suffice for his own subsistence. This principle lies at the foundation of all the history of all mankind. If it were otherwise, we should be all cultivators of the earth. We should none of us ever know the sweets of leisure; and all human science would be contained in the knowledge of seed time and harvest. But no sooner have men associated in tribes and nations, than this great truth comes to be perceived, that comparatively a very small portion of labor on the part of the community, will subsist the whole. Hence it happens that even the farmer and the husbandman have leisure for their religion, their social pleasures, and their sports; and hence it happens, which is of infinitely more importance in the history of the human mind, that, while a minority of the community are employed in the labors indispensibly conducive to the mere subsistence of the whole, the rest can devote themselves to art, to science, to literature, to contemplation, and even to all the wanton refinements of sensuality, luxury, and ostentation.
What is it then, we are naturally led to ask, that causes any man to starve, or prevents him from cultivating the earth, and subsisting upon its fruits, so long as there is a portion of soil in the country in which he dwells, that has not been applied to the producing as much of the means of human subsistence, as it is capable of producing? Mr. Malthus says, it is "the Law of Nature." "After the public notice which I have proposed, if any man chose to marry, without a prospect of being able to support a family, he should have the most perfect liberty to do so. Though to marry, in this case. is in my opinion clearly an immoral act, yet it is not one which society can justly take upon itself to prevent or punish. To the punishment of Nature therefore be should be leftd." And elsewhere, "A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents, and if the society do not want his labor, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and in fact has no business to be where be is. At Nature's mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orderse."
Never surely was there so flagrant an abuse of terms, as in this instance. Mr. Malthus is speaking of England, where there are many thousands of acres wholly uncultivated, and perhaps as many more scarcely employed in any effectual manner to increase the means of human subsistence; for these passages occur in chapters of his Essay where be is treating of our Poor-laws, and the remedies that might be applied to the defects he imputes to them. I grant him then, that it is Law which condemns the persons he speaks of to starve. So far we are agreed. This Law Mr. Malthus may affirm to be just, to be wise, to be necessary to the state of things as we find them. All this would be open to fair inquiry. Great and cogent no doubt are the reasons that have given so extensive a reign to this extreme inequality. But it is not the Law of Nature. It is the Law of very artificial life. It is the Law which "heaps upon some few with vast excess" the means of every wanton expense and every luxury, while others, some of them not less worthy, are condemned to pine in want.
Compare this then with Mr. Malthus's favorite position, in opposition to what he calls "the great error under which Mr. Godwin labors," that "political regulations and the established administration of property are in reality light and superficial causes of mischief to society, in comparison with those which result from the Laws of Naturef."
But to return, and resume the point with which this chapter commenced. If Mr. Malthus's doctrine is true, why is the globe not peopled? If the human species has so strong a tendency to increase, that, unless the tendency were violently and calamitously counteracted, they would every where "double their numbers in less than twenty-five years," and that for ever, how comes it that the world is a wilderness, a wide and desolate place, where men crawl about in little herds, comfortless, unable from the dangers of free-booters, and the dangers of wild beasts to wander from climate to climate, and without that mutual support and cheerfulness which a populous earth would most naturally afford? The man on the top of St Paul's would indeed form a conception of innumerable multitudes: but he who should survey "all the kingdoms of the world," would receive a very different impression. On which side then lies the evidence? Do the numbers of mankind actually and in fact increase or decrease? If mankind has so powerful and alarming a tendency to increase, how is it that this tendency no where shews itself in general history ? Mr. Malthus and his followers are reduced to confess the broad and glaring fact that mankind do not increase, but he has found out a calculation, a geometrical ratio, to shew that they ought to do so, and then sits down to write three volumes, assigning certain obscure, vague, and undefinable causes, why his theory and the stream of ancient and modern history are completely at variance with each other.
• Book 1, Chapter 04 : General View of the Arguments Against the Increase of Mankind
Mr. Malthus's theory is certainly of a peculiar structure, and it is somewhat difficult to account for the success it has met with.
The subject is population.
It has been agreed among the best philosophers in Europe, especially from the time of Lord Bacon to the present day, that the proper basis of all our knowledge respecting man and nature, respecting what has been in times that are past, and what may be expected in time to come, is experiment. This standard is peculiarly applicable to the subject of population.
Mr. Malthus seems in one respect fully to concur in this way of viewing the subject. There are two methods of approaching the question, the first, by deriving our ideas respecting it from the volumes of sacred writ, and the second, by having recourse to such enumerations, statistical tables, and calculations, as the industry of mere uninspired men has collected; and Mr. Malthus has made his election for the latter. Dr. Robert Wallace, an able writer on these subjects, whose works have lately engaged in a considerable degree the attention of curious enquirers, has taken' the opposite road. He begins his Dissertation on the Numbers of Mankind in Ancient and Modern Times, printed in 1758, with the position that the whole human race is descended "from a single pair," and, taking that for the basis of his theory, proceeds to calculate the periods of the multiplication of mankind.
Mr. Malthus, on the contrary reposes throughout his Essay on the pure basis of human experience and unenlightened human reason; and I have undertaken to write a refutation of his theories. He has chosen his ground; and I follow him to the contest. He had made no allusion-to Adam and Eve, and has written just as any speculator in political economy might have done, to whom the records of the Bible were unknown. If there is any thing irreverend in this, to Mr. Malthus, and not to me, the blame is to be imputed. He has constructed his arguments upon certain data, and I have attempted nothing more than the demolishing of those arguments. If any one shall be of opinion that the whole question is in the jurisdiction of another court, the Treatise 1 am writing has nothing to do with this. 1 design nothing more than an investigation of mere human authorities, and an examination of the theories of the Essay on Population ; and I leave the question in all other respects as I found it.a To return.
It will appear, I think, in the course of our discussion, that population is a subject with which mankind as yet are very little acquainted. But let us first recollect what it is that we are supposed to know. And I will first state those things which are admitted by Mr. Malthus, and which appear to make very little for the support of his system.
The globe we inhabit may be divided into the Old World and the New. Our knowledge of the history of Europe and Asia extends backward some thousand years. We know a little of the history of Africa. America was discovered about three hundred years ago, but has not in many of its parts been by any means so long a place of reception for European colonies. Mr. Malthus does not venture to carry his appeal on the subject of population there, farther back than one hundred and fifty years.b
Well then, how stands the question of population in the Old World? Mr. Malthus freely and without hesitation admits, that on this side of the globe population is, and has long been, at a stand; he might safely have added that it has not increased as far back as any authentic records of profane history will carry us. He brings forward some memorable examples of a striking depopulation:c he might have added many more: he would certainly have found it difficult to produce an example equally unequivocal, of an increase of population, in any quarter of the Old World.
As to South America, and the indigenous inhabitants of North America, it is hardly to be disputed, and Mr. Malthus is very ready to admit, that they have sustained a melancholy diminution since the voyage of Columbus.d
Such then is, so far, the foundation of our knowledge, as afforded us by experience, on the subject of population. Mr. Malthus has brought forward an exception to all this, which I shall hereafter take occasion fully to examine, in a certain tract of the globe, now known by the name of the United States of America, and he affirms his exception to spread itself over a period of one hundred and fifty years. The entire foundation of his work lies in one simple sentence: "In the Northern States of America, the population has been found to double itself for above a century and a half successively, in less than twenty-five years."e
The pith of Mr. Malthus's book therefore, and a bolder design has seldom entered into the mind of man, is to turn the exception into the rule, and the whole stream of examples in every other case, into exceptions, that are to be accounted for without detracting from the authority of the rule.
The Essay on Population is the most oddly constructed, of any book, pretending to the character of science, that was perhaps ever given to the world.
It consists, in the copy now lying before me, of three volumes.
The first chapter, containing sixteen pages, comprises the whole doctrine upon which the work is founded. He that should read the first chapter, and no more, would be in possession of every thing in the book, that is solid and compressed, and bears so much as the air of science.
The next 698 pages,f the most considerable portion of the work, are wholly employed in assigning causes why every region of the globe, in every period of its history, part of the United States of America for the last one hundred and fifty years excepted, appears to contradict the positions of Mr. Malthus's theory. This is done by exhibiting certain checks on population, the whole of which, as will more fully appear hereafter, falls under the two heads of vise and misery. The remainder of the work treats of the different systems or expedients which have been proposed or have prevailed, as they affect the evils which arise out of the author's principle of population,g and of our future prospects respecting the removal or mitigation of these evils.h
Now upon this shewing, I affirm that Mr. Malthus is the most fortunate man that ever lived, Sterne's king of Bohemia himself not being excepted.i Notwithstanding this glaring rottenness and fallacy in the first concoction of his work, the author has carried the whole world before him; no other system of thinking on the subject is admitted into the company of the great; hundreds of men who were heretofore earnest champions of the happiness of mankind have become his converts; and though, I believe, from thirty to forty answers have been written to the Essay on Population, not one of them, so far as I know, has undertaken to controvert the main principle and corner-stone of his system.
The strength of Mr. Malthus's writing wholly depends upon his entrenching himself in general statements. If we hope for any victory over him, it must be by drawing him out of his strong hold, and meeting him upon the fair ground of realities.
The hypothesis of the Essay on Population is this. The human species doubles itself in the United States of America every twenty-five years: therefore it must have an inherent tendency so to double itself: therefore it would so double itself in the Old World, were not the increase intercepted by causes which have not yet sufficiently engaged the attention of political enquirers.
To clear up this point let us consider how many children may be allowed to a marriage, upon the supposition that the object is barely to keep the numbers of the human species up to their present standard. In the first place it is clear, that every married pair may be allowed two upon an average, without any increase to the population, nay, with the certainty of diminution if they fall short of this. In the next place it is unquestionable, that every child that is born, does not live to years of maturity, so as to be able to propagate the kind; for this condition is necessary, the children who die in their nonage plainly contributing nothing to the keeping up the numbers of our species. I should have thought therefore, that we might safely allow of three children to every marriage, without danger of overstocking the community. It will hereafter appear that all political economists allow four, it being the result of various censuses and tables of population, that one-half of the born die under years of maturity.k To this number of children to be allowed to every marriage upon an average, the purpose being barely to keep up the numbers of our species to the present standard, something must be added, in consideration of the known fact, that every man and woman do not marry, and thus put themselves in the road for continuing their species.
When Mr. Malthus therefore requires us to believe in the geometrical ratio, or that the human species has a natural tendency to double itself every twenty-five years, he does nothing less in other words, than require us to believe that every marriage among human creatures produces upon an average, including the prolific marriages, those in which the husband or wife die in the vigor of their age or in the early years of their union, those in which the prolific power seems particularly limited, and the marriages that are totally barren, eight children.l
All this Mr. Malthus requires us to believe, because he wills it. Let it never again be made one of the reproaches of the present day, that we are fallen upon an age of incredulity. I am sure no false prophet, in the darkest ages of ignorance, could ever boast of a greater number of hoodwinked and implicit disciples, than Mr. Malthus in this enlightened period.
How comes it, that neither this author, nor any one for him, has looked into this view of the question? There are such things as registers of marriages and births. To these it was natural for Mr. Malthus to have recourse for a correlative argument to support his hypothesis. The writer of the Essay on Population has resorted to certain statements of the population of the United States, and from them has inferred that the number of its citizens have doubled every twenty-five years, and as he adds, " by procreation only:" that is, in other words, as we have shown, that every marriage in America, and by parity of reasoning, in all other parts of the world, produces upon an average eight children. For the difference between the United States and the Old World does not, I presume, lie in the superior fecundity of their women, but that a greater number of children are cut off in the Old World in years of nonage, by vise and misery. We double very successfully (if they double) in the first period; but we do not, like them, rear our children, to double over again in the second. Naturally therefore he would have produced a strong confirmation of his hypothesis, by shewing from the registers of different parts of the world, or of different countries of Europe, that every marriage does upon an average produce eight children: and if he had done this, I think he would have saved me the trouble of writing this volume. Something however has been done in the way of collating the registers of marriages and births ; and of this I shall make full use in my Second Book.
It may however be objected, that there are two ways in which an increase of population may be intercepted; either by the number of children who shall perish in their nonage, through the powerful agency, as Mr. Malthus informs us, of vise and misery; or by certain circumstances which shall cause a smaller number to be born: it may not therefore be merely by the ravages of an extensive mortality, that population in the Old World is kept down to its level.
Mr. Malthus himself has furnished me with a complete answer to this objection. In the first edition of his bookm he sets out with what he called "fairly making two postulata: first, that food is necessary to the existence of man: secondly, that the passion between the sexes is necessary, and will always remain nearly in its present state."
This indeed is one of the "passages, which the author has expunged in the later editions of his book, that he might not inflict an unnecessary violence upon the feelings of his readers"n or, as he himself expresses it, is one of the places, in which he "has endeavored to soften some of the harshest conclusions of his first Essay—in doing which he hopes he has not violated the principles of just reasoning."o But, as Mr. Malthus has retained to the last all the conclusions drawn from those postulata, and as his argument respecting the impracticability of a permanent state of equality among human beings, founded upon the parity of these two propositions, stands in the Fifth Edition verbatim as it stood in the first,p I cannot myself consent to his withdrawing his premises, at the same time that he retains the inferences built upon them.
Again: in compliance with "the feelings of certain readers," Mr. Malthus has added in his subsequent editions, to the two checks upon population, viz. vise and misery, as they stood in the first, a third which he calls moral restraint. But then he expressly qualifies this by saying, "the principle of moral restraint has undoubtedly in past ages operated with very inconsiderable force;"q subjoining at the same time his protest against "any opinion respecting the probable improvement of society, in which we are not borne out by the experience of the past."r
It is clearly therefore Mr. Malthus's doctrine, that population is kept down in the Old World, not by a smaller number of children being born among us, but by the excessive number of children that perish in their non-age through the instrumentality of vise and misery.
Let us then proceed to illustrate this proposition, in its application to our own beloved country of England. We will take its present population at ten millions. Of this population we will suppose five millions to be adults. There must then, according to the statement of Dr. Franklin and other calculators, be ten millions of children, born and to be born from these five millions of adults, to give us a chance of keeping up the race of Englishmen. Of these ten millions five millions must be expected to die in their nonage, according to the constitution and course of nature. Surely this, together with the incessant uninterrupted mortality of the middle-aged, and of the more ancient members of society, may be regarded as sufficiently rendering the globe we inhabit "a universe of death."
But Mr. Malthus demands from us, by virtue of his geometrical ratio, ten millions of children more than our unsuspecting ancestors ever dreamed of, that is, eight children for every pair of adults. I say eight, because, if in countries where they have room and every facility for rearing their children, two perish in their nonage out of the first four, there can be no reason that I can apprehend, why as many should not perish out of the second four. Thus it appears that, for every five millions that grow up to the estate of man and woman, twenty millions of children are born, of which fifteen millions, every where in the Old World, perish in their infancy. The first five millions of those who die in this manner, constitute a mortality that we must be contented to witness, since such, it seems, is the condition of our existence. But the next ten millions I should call a sort of superfetation of alternate births and deaths, purely for the benefit of the geometrical ratio.
But where is the record of all this? In most civilized countries some sort of register is kept of births, marriages, and deaths. I believe no trace of these additional births which Mr. Malthus has introduced to our acquaintance, is any where to be found. Were all these children sent out of the world, without so much as the ceremonies of baptism? Were they exposed among the wilds of Mount Taygetus, or cast into the Barathrum, or hurled from the Tarpeian rock, or carelessly thrown forth, as Mr. Malthus says the Chinese infants are in the streets of Pekin? For my own part, I am disposed to require some further evidence on the subject, than merely to be told they must have been born and have died, in defiance of all received evidence on the subject, because such is the inference that follows from the principles of the Essay on Population.
In reality, if I had not taken up the pen with the express purpose of confuting all the errors of Mr. Malthus's book, and of endeavoring to introduce other principles, more cheering, more favorable to the best interests of mankind, and better prepared to resist the inroads of vise and misery, I might close my argument here, and lay down the pen with this brief remark, that, when this author shall have produced from any country, the United States of North America not excepted, a register of marriages and births, from which it shall appear that there are on an average eight births to a marriage, then, and not till then, can I have any just reason to admit his doctrine of the geometrical ratio.
a on this subject, Book II. Chapter II. Note a.
b Vol. I. p.7.
c Vol. I. p. 255. et seqq.
d Vol. II. p. 289.
e Vol. I. p. 7.
f Book I. and II.
g Book III.
h Book IV.
i "The corporal forthwith began to run back in his mind, the principal events in the king of Bohemia's story, from every one of which it appeared that he was the most fortunate man that ever existed in the world." Tristram Shandygaff, vol. VI.
k Franklin,Works. 1806 vol. II. p. 385.
l "If in Europe they hare but four births to a marriage, we in America must reckon eight."—Franklin, ubi supra.
m P. 11.
n Quarterly Review, No. XXXIV, p. 374.
o Preface, Second Edition, p. vii; Fifth Edition, p. ix.
p First Edition, p. 184 to 809; Fifth Edition, vol. II. p. 251 to 270.
q Second Edition, p. 384. Sec this question more fully discussed in Book VI. of the present work.
r Preface, p. ix.
• Book 1, Chapter 05 : Numbers of Mankind in Ancient and Modern Times
Les hommes ne multiplient pas aussi aisément qu'oun le pense. Voltaire, Histoire Générale, CHAP. I.
It is not a little singular, and is proper to be commemorated here, that a controversy existed in the early part of the last century, as to the comparative populousness of ancient nations, or the contrary. One of the leaders in this debate was the celebrated Montesquieu; and what he says on the subject is so much to the purpose, that I shall translate the passage.
"To amuse in some part," says one of the correspondents in the Persian Letters to another, "the time of my visit to Europe, I devoted myself to the perusal of the historians, ancient and modern; I compare the different ages of the world; I am pleased to make them pass, so to speak, in review before me; and I fix my attention particularly upon those great changes, which have rendered some ages so different from others, and the world so unlike to itself.
"You perhaps have not turned your thoughts, upon a thing that to men is altogether surprising. How happens it that the world is so thinly peopled in comparison with what it was formerly? How is it that nature has wholly lost that prodigious fecundity which she boasted in earlier times? Is it that she is in her decrepitude, and is hastening to her final extinction?
"I have resided more than a year in Italy, and I have seen there only the Ruins of that Italy which was anciently so famous. Though its present population is confined to the towns, they are themselves mere vacancy and a desart: it seems as if they subsisted for no other purpose, than to mark the spot where those magnificent cities formerly stood, with whose policy and whose wars history is filled.
"There are persons who pretend that Rome alone formerly contained a greater population than any one of the most powerful kingdoms of Europe does at present. There were single Roman citizens, who possessed ten, and even twenty thousand slaves, without including those they used for rustic employments: and as the number of the citizens alone amounted to 4 or 500,000, we cannot calculate the entire population of this great city, without reaching to a number at which the imagination revolts.
"Sicily, in times of old, contained within its shores flourishing states and powerful kingdoms, which have entirely disappeared: it is now considerable only for its volcanoes.
"Greece is so wholly deserted, as not to contain the hundredth part of the number of its former inhabitants.
"Spain, formerly so abundant in men, exhibits nothing at the present day but a variety of provinces, almost without inhabitants; and France is an unpeopled region, compared with that ancient Gaul which Cæsar describes to us.
"The north of Europe is in a manner stripped f its people. The times are no more, when she was obliged to separate her population into portions, and to send forth, as in swarms, colonies and whole nations, to seek some new spot where they might dwell at large.
"Poland and Turkey in Europe are almost without inhabitants.
"In American we do not find more than the two-hundredth part of the men who formerly composed its mighty empires.
"Asia is not in a much better condition. That Asia Minor, which boasted so many powerful monarchies, and so prodigious a number of great cities, has now but two or three cities within her limits. As to the Greater Asia, that part which is subject to the Turk is in no better condition, and for the part over which our monarch reigns [Persia], if we compare it with its former flourishing condition, we shall see that it contains but a very small residue of the population which anciently furnished the innumerable host of Xerxes and Darius.
"As to the smaller states, which are placed in the vicinity of these great empires, they are literally unpeopled; such for example are Imiretta, Circassia and Guriel. All these princes, with the extent of country over which they preside, have scarcely in their subjection so many as fifty thousand human beings.
"Egypt has not suffered less than the countries I have mentioned.
"In a word I review the different nations of the earth; and I find nothing but destruction. I seem to see a race of beings, just escaped from the ravages of an universal plague, or an universal famine.
"Africa has always been so unpenetrated, that we cannot speak of it with the same precision as of other parts of the globe; but, if we turn our attention only to the coast of the Mediterranean, the portion of it which is known, we see at once how wretchedly it has sunk, since the period in which it formed a Roman province of the first order. Its princes are now so feeble, that they are strictly the smallest power in existence.
"Upon a calculation, the most exact that matters of this sort will admit, I am led to think that the earth does not contain now fully the fiftieth part of the human beings, that inhabited it in the time of Cæsar. What is most astonishing is, that its population every day grows thinner; and if it goes on at the same rate, in one thousand years more, the race of man will be extinct.
"Here then, my dear friend, we are presented with the most fearful catastrophe that imagination can form. Yet it is hardly attended to, because it proceeds by insensible degrees, and spreads itself over such a series of ages. But that very thing proves incontestibly, that there is an innate vise, a concealed and inaccessible poison, a wasting disease, which clings to our nature, and cannot be removeda ."
It is surprising, if the Persian Letters ever fell in the way of Mr. Malthus's juvenile reading, that this impressive representation should not a little have startled him, amid his anxieties and alarms for the excessive and ruinors multiplication of mankind. It would seem to require considerable strength of nerve, in the face of such a picture, to preach his doctrine of depopulation; for such in the sequel it will be discovered to be.
I know that his representation of Montesquieu has been controverted, and that among others it has fallen under the acute examination of Hume. But the most I think that Hume has effected, is to throw some portion of uncertainty on the subject.
It may be worth while to remark how gross and obvious are the mistakes into which a careless observer inevitably falls upon this question of population.
He goes into a village or a little town, and he is struck with the number of children he sees, playing, skipping, laughing, crying, paddling in the dirt, and almost running under his horse's feet, as he passes along. From this phenomenon he sagaciously concludes," There is no fear for the future population of this village."
If he made an enumeration of the inhabitants of the village, would he find that the number of children taken together exceed the number of inhabitants arrived at years of maturity? The result of the American census, as we shall presently see, is that half the inhabitants are under, and half above sixteen years of age. But, it has appeared from all the Tables, that if the present race of grown men and women did not produce children to the amount of double their own number, the race of mankind could not be kept up, consequently, if at any given period, as in America, the children only equal the adults in number, we must depend upon the recruits to be added every year, for the preservation of our species. If those that have already become mother universally ceased to become mothers in the future, and devolved the task wholly upon their offspring, and this were repeated from period to period, it would be a matter of no difficult calculation to determine the precise era at which the human race would be extinct.
And what is the ground of this general mistake? Simply that we see those who are born, but do not see those who die. They are consigned to the silent grave, and we soon learn almost to forget that they ever existed. Hence Mr. Malthus and others would terrify us with the specter of and imaginary overpopulation. Xerxes, I suspect, understood this matter much better, when he wept to think that, of the millions of men that passed in review before him in his march into Greece, not one would be alive at the end of one hundred years. Every old man is accustomed to the remark, that he sees all his contemporaries dying from around him, and that he is left in a manner alone in a new world. We depend entirely and exclusively upon the rising generation for the future population of the earth. In a few year I and my present readers of the year 1820 will have all left the stage, and the children that live under our roofs, or that we see in the streets, will be the only men and women, to conduct affairs, and continue the race, of human kind. Mr. Malthus, and men like Mr. Malthus, who have been accustomed to look with a jealous eye, and with certain feeling of terror and alarm, upon the number of little children they meet with, would, if they maturely considered this, contemplate the spectacle with a very different sentiment.
• Book 1, Chapter 06 : Illustrations from the History of China
Nothing can be more ludicrous than that part of Mr. Malthus's book, in which, for 698 successive pages, he professes to treat of the check by which population has actually been kept down to the level of the means of subsistence, whether in ancient or modern time. He is at a stand. He takes little notice of the many instances, both in Ancient and modern times, in which it has glaringly decreased. And he affirms, upon what evidence it is one of the special objects of this book to examine, that population, in unchecked, would go on, doubling itself every twenty-five years, or in a much shorter period, for ever.
Now, if Mr. Malthus has intended a fair and full examination of this question, he should have set down, in the first place, in each country how many children, in the natural order of things, would be born, and then have proceeded, in the second place, to show how they were cut off. This would have been to have reasoned like a mathematician, like a genuine political economist, and like a philosopher. But the first of these points Mr. Malthus has uniformly omitted. He has therefore appeared to walk over the course at an easy pace, somewhat like Bobadil in the play, calling for "twenty more, kill them too," simply by directing the keeper of the lists on no account to give entrance to a real combatant.
Since the author of the Essay on Population has omitted this essential part of the consideration, I will endeavor to supply the defect.
The fairest instance on many accounts to begin with, is that of China. In Mr. Malthus's book there is a chapter, entitled," Of the Checks to population in China and Japan:" and the author, having spent a number of smooth sentences on the subject, to the amount of thirty-four pages, seems well satisfied that he has shewn that the actual state and history of China and Japan serve fully to confirm his opinion, that the population of the world would go on, unchecked, at the rate of doubling itself every twenty-five years or sooner.
China is a country that is supposed to be more fully peopled than any other country in the world. According to Mr. Malthus the population of that empire has been wholly at a stand for the last hundred years: for he quotes Du Halde in the beginning of the last century, to confirm the enumeration of Sir George Staunton at the end of it, and concludes that these two authorities substantially agree with each other b. Now China is a country of so uniform a tenor, its manners, its customs, its laws, its division of property, and its policy continuing substantially the same, that, if the population has been at a stand during the last century, there is every reason to suppose it has been at a stand, perhaps for ten centuries. China therefore is the most desirable instance that can be taken, of any old country, upon which to try the doctrine of the geometrical ratio.
China has other advantages of no mean importance to the application of our argument. First, That in this empire "extraordinary encouragements have always been given to marriage c." Hume states, that every man in China is married before he is twenty d. Mr. Barrow, a recent traveler, who accompanied Lord Macartney in his embassy in 1798, says," Public opinion considers celibacy as disgraceful, and a sort of infamy is attached to a man who continues unmarried beyond a certain time of life. As an encouragement to marriage, every male child may be provided for, and receive a stipend from the moment of his birth, by his name being enrolled on the military list." He adds, "In China there are few of those manufacturing cities, which among us produce so great a waste of human life. No great capitals are here employed in any one branch of the arts. In general each labors for himself in his own profession. The still and inanimate kind of life which is led by the women, at the same time that it is supposed to render them more prolific, preserves them from accidents that might occasion untimely births e." So that here full scope is afforded to the principle of population.
It is somewhat remarkable that in this country, where the principle of population might reasonably be expected to have been first understood, if not in the exact period of its duplication, at least in its tremendous tendency to excess, no remedies should ever have been thought of by the governors of the country. China is something like the republic of Venice, as its stood for a period of a thousand years, famous for the profoundness of its policy, and the rigidness of its regulations, The great length of time during which its political economy has remained unchanged, implies this. All human things are subject to decay. The law of mutability is so powerful within us, that scarcely any thing is of force enough to control it. But there is somewhat of so vivifying nature in the constitution of China, as to bid defiance to corruption.
Mr. Malthus every Where, up and down in the Essay on population, preaches against the extensive use that we make of the institutions of marriage, and seems to think that the great remedy we have for the miseries of mankind as arising from the principle of population, is to be found in discountenancing marriage among the poor. How shallow then are the politicians of this ancient empire, who have uniformly afforded the most "extraordinary encouragements to marriage!"
Another circumstance is scarcely less miraculous. The exposing of children is a very common practice in China. So far, so good; this is an obvious way of keeping down population; though Mr. Malthus seems in some places to doubt its efficacy. But the shallow politicians of China again set themselves against this; and edict after edict has been published to put an end to it f.
The statesmen of China have confessedly had the knowledge and experience of several thousand years: but experience is thrown away upon some people. The government is celebrated for the paternal spirit displayed by the head of it towards his subject: but some fathers, though with no want of love, become the authors of misery to their children by their injudicious conduct.
I proceed however to supply that which, as before stated, Mr. Malthus has omitted, viz. an account how many children, upon the hypothesis of the Essay on Population, would be born, that we may afterwards proceed, with the more perfect preparaton, to consider how they are cut off.
Mr. Malthus takes the population of China at 333,000,000 g. For the sake of a more convenient and compendious arithmetic I will put it down at three hundred millions. Now the doctrine of the Essay on Population is, that "population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years." Therefore in China, after every proper deduction has been made for balancing the number of deaths by an adequate number of births, that so the population may not decrease, there must be an additional number of births, or sort of superfetation, to the amount of three hundred millions every twenty-five years, to provided for the doubling required by the Essay on Population.
In other countries, we will suppose, population is more or less kept down by the various discouragements to marriage held forth in those countries, and, according to Mr. Malthus, by the late period of life at which marriage frequently takes place. But in China extraordinary encouragements are given to marriage, and every man is married before he is twenty. We may be secure therefore that in that country the full number of children is born, whatever may become of them afterwards.
Hereafter, perhaps before the close of the present century, we shall know something of the population of the United States of America. But, in the mean time, and while, in the sense of genuine statesmen and legislators, we know nothing, Mr. Malthus informs us, and lays it down as the corner-stone of his portentous and calamitous system, that "the population there has been found to double itself, for above a century and a half successively, in less than twenty-five years," and that this "has been repeatedly ascertained to be from procreation only." How many children on average to a marriage are produced in the United States? No on has pretended authentically to inform us. Are they more than in the old countries of Europe? Probably not. What number of those that are born, die before ten or sixteen years of age? Of all this we are ignorant.
But whatever be the number of the children born in the United States of America, that die before they arrive at maturity, we know that in China three hundred millions of children more in proportion than in America, die every twenty-five years. This is as certain, as the doctrine of the Essay on Population is true.
The human mind is but ill adapted to grapple with very high numbers; and I am persuaded that important errors have been committed by theoretical writers in consequence of this infirmity. I will therefore endeavor to conform myself to the limited nature of human faculties, by reducing these numbers. It has already appeared, that three hundred millions of extra-infants must perish in China every twenty-five years, beyond the proportion of the number of infants that would perish in the United States. Now, if we divide this number by twenty-five, we shall find that twelve millions of extra-infants must perish annually in China, to support the doctrine of the Essay on Population.
This surely is a portentous sort of proposition to be built upon a theory, without a single foundation in the records of the country to support it. Mr. Malthus indeed says, that the exposing of children is a very common practice in China, and that about two thousand are annually exposed in the city of Pekinh. Alas, what is this to the twelve millions of extra-infants that it is absolutely necessary should perish annually in that country? What a scene of devastation does Mr. Malthus's doctrine lead us to see in China! They must lie on heaps, like what we read of human bodies in the plague of Marseilles. As fast as a certain number of these infants waste away in the streets, an equal number supplies their place, so that the scene of putrescence and the noisomeness of the stench are made perpetual. Does any traveler relate that he has witnessed this?- And all this time the legislators of the country know nothing of the matter, and go on from century to century, giving extraordinary encouragement to marriage, and prohibiting the exposing of children.
But all this has no existence but in Mr. Malthus's book. It must be true, because in the United States of America" the population has been found to double itself, for above a century and a half successively, in less than twenty-five years, and that from procreation only." I shall hereafter proceed to consider the population of America. I have no doubt that one of these propositions is as true as the other.
I am well aware that we know nothing of the population of China, and almost as little of that of the United States. I have therefore taken these statements almost entirely from Mr. Malthus himself. It is for him and his disciples to explain and to reconcile them.
From all that has been said however it is perfectly clear, that the statesmen and legislators of China, who have proceeded with a steady, and perhaps I may add and enlightened, attention to the subject for centuries, not only have no suspicion of the main principles taught in the Essay on Population, but are deeply impressed with the persuasion that, without encouragement and care to prevent it, the numbers of the human species have a perpetual tendency to decline.
Upon the whole therefore it is as certain as any thing can be, from the shewing of Mr. Malthus himself, that the empire of China has never been subject to the operation of the geometrical ratio.
Footnotes
b Vol. I. p. 292, 3.
c P. 300.
d Essay on the Populousness of Ancient Nations.
e Barrow, Chap. IX.
f It is necessary however to be observed in this place, that my argument does not in any degree depend on the question, whether this is the true rate of the population of China. If the real number of the inhabitants in one-third or one-half less than is here put down, we have only to reduce the following numbers accordingly; the proportions, every moral consideration, and every consideration drawn from credibility will remain the same.
g P. 293. This amount was regularly delivered in to Lord Macartney, in the form of an abstract of a census, taken in the preceding year, and digested under seventeen heads, for the different provinces of China within the Great Wall. "We had always," says Mr. Barrow, "found the officer who delivered it, a plain, unaffected, and honest man, who had on no occasion attempted to deceive or impose on us; and we could not consistently consider it in any other light than as a document drawn up from authentic materials."
h P. 316. It is not unworthy of notice that Mr. Ellis, the last traveler in China, who accompanied Lord Amherst in 1816, says," Of that degree of distress which might drive parents to infanticide there was no appearance, nor did any fact of the description come to my knowledge." He adds in a note," It is by no means my intention to deny the existence of the practice, but to express some doubt of the asserted frequency." Ellis, Chap. VII. The modesty of the note, in all reason, inforces the statement in the text. It shews that Mr. Ellis is not a man who has devoted himself to the support of a theory.
• Book 1, Chapter 07 : India
The history of India bears a striking resemblance to that of China; and therefore it seems necessary to say something on that subject. The learning of the Bramins is not less ancient; and the history of their improvements and their sciences is lost in the abyss of antiquity. The natives of Indostan strongly resemble the Chinese in the unchangeableness of their institutions; what is to-day, equally existed yesterday, and has remained without alteration, as far back as their annals, their laws and their literature can carry us. The Chinese were conquered by the Tartars; but their records present to us the singular spectacles of the conquerors adopting the manners, the customs, and the institutions of the people they conquered. India has been less fortunate. Their Mahometan invaders fixed an empire among them, claiming a superiority over the nations they found there, rejecting their system of policy and religion, and looking down with ignorant disdain upon their science and literature. But the Hindu institutions have survived amid these disadvantages.
.The population of India does not seem to be less considerable than that of China I have conversed with a few persons, the best informed, and the most learned as to every thing that relates to India, that are to be found in Great Britain, and they are decisively of that opinion a. There are forests that exist in China, and there are large tracts of waste land in India; but the districts favorable to population are not less thickly inhabited in the latter than in the former. This statement I find strongly corroborated in a paper in the Asiatic Researches b, entitled, A Statistical View of the Population of Burdwan, and Some Neighboring Districts of the Government of Bengal, by W. B. Bayley, late Judge and Chief Magistrate of Burdwan. His statement is, that" the district of Burdwan contains 262,634 dwelling-houses, of which 218,853 are occupied by Hindus, and 43,781 by Mahometans: allowing therefore 5 ½ inhabitants to each dwelling, the total population of Burdwan will amount to 1,444,487 souls. The area of the district of Burdwan, as its boundaries are at present arranged, comprises about 2400 English square miles. On an average therefore each square mile contains a population of more than 600 persons." He adds," The total population of England gives an average of near two hundred inhabitants to each square mile; but, if some particular counties are selected, the proportion will be found to approximate much more nearly to that of Burdwan. The county of Lancaster, for instance, furnishes, according to the last population reports of 1811, an average of 476 inhabitants to a square mile."
The situation of India then, as far as the subject I am here examining is concerned, is precisely the same as that of China. The great men who founded her institutions had no apprehensions of the evils of over-population. These institutions are gray with the hoar of many thousand years; and yet in all that time no one of her politicians and statesmen has ever suspected the tremendous mischief Mr. Malthus has brought to light. The Ordinances of Menu, as translated by Sir William Jones, treat marriage as one of the first duties of a citizen, and the begetting a son as a debt which every man owes to his country. And yet, if population is at a stand in India, and if marriage, and "early marriage c," as Mr Malthus state it, is almost universal, then, upon the hypothesis of the geometrical ratio, it is indispensable that six out of eight, and fifteen millions out of twenty that are born, must perish in years of nonage. God knows how much vise and misery may be necessary to effect this purpose, which however, upon Mr. Malthus's principles, always is effected. But every sober and reflecting man must infallibly conclude that this is not so. And every rational man must stand astonished, when he inquires by what evidence the author of the Essay of Population endeavors to make out this most revolting and incredible of all propositions. Mr. Malthus observes that India "has in all ages been subject to the most dreadful famines d." But what is this to the purpose? If all marry, and if, wherever marriage is "very greatly encouraged e, a sufficient number of children are born to support a doubling of population every twenty-five years, then, wherever that population is at a stand, fifteen out of twenty millions of shildren that are born, must perish in years of nonage. Does Mr. Malthus think, that the famines, here and there, or if he will frequently, scatter through the history of India, are sufficient to account for this? We have nothing to do, in the case of so monstrous an hypothesis as that of the Essay on Population, but to keep the object of our contemplation fixed, and to look into it intently, and it will speedily vanish from our sight, and sink into nothing.
Footnotes
a Among others, I would beg leave to name Mr. H. T. Colebroke, President of the Asiatic Society in London.
b Asiatic Researches, vol. XII. No. xiii.
c Vol. I. p. 277.
d P. 278
• Book 1, Chapter 08 : South America
Of what I may denominate the ancient history of America, we know infinitely less, than of the history of China and of India. These latter countries still exist in a state very similar to their ancient state, and have been made the subject of investigation, the former to a succession of travelers, and the latter to a number of gentlemen for the last thirty or forty years, who have studied its ancient and esoteric language, and have devoted a considerable part of their lives to the investigation of the Hindu policy and literature. But the Spaniards in their invasion of America, were, I suppose, the most merciless destroyers any where to be found in the annals of mankind: all knowledge, all history, all antiquities sunk before their savage barbarities. Yet there is something so much to the purpose of our present inquiry, in the histories of Mexico and Peru in particular, that 1 cannot persuade myself to pass them over in silence.
Nothing is more slow than the progress of nations. The beginnings of things are involved in impenetrable darkness; and exclusively of the light of revelation, we can annex no very distinct idea to the word, beginning. But, on this subject of population, I shall follow the example of Mr. Malthus, and reason only upon the facts of political economy, and such philosophical principles as we are able to found on these. What we seem to know best on this subject, is that, the further we go back, the more numerous was the population of the globe.
The population of the New World, when it first became known to Europeans, is put down by Montesquieu and Montaigne at four hundred "millions at the lowest.a The original discoverers are at a loss for expressions to do justice to what they saw. They tell us, that the continent of South America swarmed with human beings as an ant-hill does with ants,b and that the population reached to the utmost extent of possible numbers. The island of Hispaniola, when first discovered by Columbus in 1492, contained three millions of people,c though at the period when its history was sketched by the virtuous and illustrious Las Casas in 1542, the number of its natives did not exceed two hundred persons.
The Mexican empire, we are told, had been founded only about one hundred and thirty years before the invasion of Cortez in 1521; and Montezuma was the ninth monarch in the order of succession who had swayed its scepter.d But for this we need far other evidence than that of the soldiers by whom this people was exterminated, and the priests, the object of whose fanatical zeal was to establish what they called the Christian religion, upon the ruin of all monuments and all antiquity that were to be found in the country. The Mexicans, it appears, did not possess the art of writing, though in many other arts they had reached to a pitch of improvement altogether surprising. It would have needed therefore the observation of travelers, imbued with the very soul of philosophy, and who should have spent their lives in the search, to have handed down to us the true records and history of this wonderful people. If the Portuguese had been enabled to burn, massacre and exterminate the Chinese nation, in the manner in which they and the Spaniards treated the inhabitants of South America, what should we have known of the curious institutions, the great discoveries, and the endless annals and history of that illustrious monarchy?e
The South Americans were not willing to "sing the Lord's song" in the ear of their cruel invaders. They were never questioned with kindness, nor by gentle degrees encouraged to call forth a frank and communicative spirit. All that we know of their history, was extorted under the influence of terror, and listened to with the supercilious scorn which the brutal consciousness of superior strength, and the sanguinary spirit of bigotry and persecution are so well qualified to inspire. In no long time, so completely were these poor people subdued by the hardhearted avarice of their masters, that they felt no pleasure in recollecting what Mexico had been, and the tales perhaps of revolving ages of glory that their infancy had heard. From an industrious and ingenious people, among whom astronomy had deposited her secrets, and the profoundest mysteries of policy and government were familiar, they sunk into a state of imbecility and helpless despondence, upon which the wild and active savage in the woods might look down with a well founded sense of superiority.
Here then, as well as every where else, we are struck with the profound ignorance which has existed on the subject of population. The historians of South America, to a man, have found no difficulty in believing that an empire, which boasted that it could lead three millions of warriors into the field,f was sprung from some petty wandering tribe, that three hundred years before had come down " from some unknown regions towards the north and north-west,"g and settled themselves in this delicious climate.
From Mexico let us pass to Peru. Nothing can be more extraordinary than the institutions of that empire. They had no such thing as individual property. They had the institutions of the rigid Spartans, combined with a mildness of character hardly to be paralleled in any other age or country. The surface of the territory they inhabited was divided into three equal portions, one devoted to the service of religion, another to the maintenance of the government, and the third to the subsistence of the nation. The fertility of the soil, and the favorableness of the climate rendered the labors of the Peruvians light. They repaired to their occupation with the sound of musical instruments and with songs. Every thing among them was cheerful and serene. The monarch always considered himself as the father of his people, and was regarded accordingly. The whole nation was divided into decurias and centuries; and a perpetual vigilance and admonition were exercised by those in authority through the whole empire.
It is well observed by abbé Raynal, that nothing can be more unreasonable than to question the truth of this story. Who among the destroyers of this empire was sufficiently enlightened, to frame a fictitious system of policy, so well combined, and so consistent? Where could he have borrowed the idea of many institutions in legislation and police, to which at that time there was nothing parallel in any other part of the world? By what motive could he have been induced to pen so bitter a satire upon his own exploits, and to draw down upon himself and his companions the execration of all enlightened posterity? Would not his story have been contradicted by a multitude of contemporary witnesses, instead of which we find among them the most marvelous consistency and consent?h
Robertson very properly remarks that among the Peruvians famine was unknown. The whole wealth of the nation consisted in the produce of the earth. As this was divided into three equal parts, one for religion, one for the incas, and one for the people, there was always a sufficient quantity in reserve, which the government might distribute as they saw necessary. The quantity of soil under cultivation was not left to the discretion of individuals, but was regulated by public authority with provident attention to the demands of the state.i
We know nothing of their institutions respecting marriage. But the negative evidence on this head is abundantly sufficient. No reasonable man will believe that their laws on this subject were substantially different from those of China and Indostan. We have no account of abortions, or the exposing of infants. We know that at no time was there any deficiency of provisions. The Peruvian government was distinguished from all others, by its paternal care and tenderness towards the people. And, as the whole wealth of the state consisted in the fruits of the earth, it follows that every additional laborer given to the community, was so much added to the general stock.
Such was the population of the New World, at the disastrous moment when a native of Europe first set his foot on her shores. The depopulation was so rapid, that human imagination finds itself incapable of keeping pace with it. According to Las Casas,k who relates only what he had every day an opportunity to see, nothing can exceed the wanton folly and brutality with which the Spaniards at first destroyed her inhabitants merely for their sport. If it be true, as he has asserted, that in fifty years three millions of the inhabitants of Hispaniola were reduced to two hundred (and no other authority dissents from his, at least as to the final term of the progression), it is such a waste of human life, as perhaps no other period of history can produce.l
The original population however of Mexico and Peru has not been absolutely exterminated, as was the case with the inhabitants found by the Spaniards in the Greater Antilles. Robertson estimates the number of Indians, according to the latest accounts, in Mexico at 2,000,000, and in Peru at 2,500,000.m
"In proportion," according to this author, "as the Spanish court discovered the importance of its American possessions, the necessity of new modeling their whole administration became obvious. There was otherwise reason to apprehend that, instead of possessing countries peopled to such a degree as to be susceptible of progressive improvement, Spain would soon remain proprietor only of a vast uninhabited desert."n "The court of Madrid," he adds, "began at this time to display a humane solicitude and tender concern for the good treatment of the natives."o "In no code of laws," he asserts, " is a greater attention manifested, or precautions multiplied with more prudent concern, for the preservation, the security, and the happiness of the subject, than we discover in the collection of the Spanish laws for the Indies." Among the instances of this, he specifies the "hospitals which have been erected in Lima, in Cusco, and in Mexico, where the Indians are treated with tenderness and humanity."p To this I may add from Montesquieu, that " the Spanish administrators will not suffer any native above fifteen years of age to live unmarried; nay, that the set time of wedlock appointed for them is, at fourteen years for the male, and thirteen for the female."
In this brief review of the history of South America there are many things worthy of our observation.
In the first place, we are struck with the consideration, how little the inhabitants of the New World, as well as of all other parts of the globe, were aware of the mischiefs of overpopulation. South America, says Las Casas, " was found by us, swarming with human beings, as an anthill swarms with ants." To be sure we are told that the South Americans were a very unrefining and unreflecting people; but yet one would have thought that so broad and glaring an evil could not have been overlooked by them. The moment a small number of voracious Europeans came among them, they felt the seriousness of the grievance. But, till then, they appear to have done extremely well. They did not tear each other to pieces, to see who should obtain possession of the means of subsistence. They were not aware of the tremendous consequences of having a family. The inhabitants of the Greater Antilles appear to have been the mildest and most inoffensive people any where to be read of. The innocence of the Peruvians has grown into a proverb. All was right and serene and prosperous among them, even by the confession of those very marauders by whom this fair scene of things was for ever subverted. It is sufficiently memorable, that in all the most populous parts of the globe, the policy of discountenancing marriage was never once thought of, but the contrary. This expedient for increasing the happiness of the human race, is a conception, the originality of which is fairly ascribable to Mr. Malthus.
It is proper however that in this place we should once again apply the calculation, which I regard as one main criterion of the truth or falsehood of the principle of the Essay on Population. Hispaniola contained three millions of inhabitants. Consequently, to each generation of these inhabitants must be born six millions of children; and of these children, supposing the population to be at a stand, four millions and a half must perish under the age of puberty. Is it possible to imagine any thing, that requires a greater degree of implicit faith to receive? The Hispaniolans were in a state of the utmost simplicity. Their fine climate and their fertile soil had the effect of freeing them from almost all care for to-morrow. Where were they to find the vise and misery that might opportunely deliver them from the burden of a superabundant offspring? They went on carelessly, unapprehensive that they stood in need of such a remedy: but God, we must suppose, came in the night, and took away their children, even as in the history of the Jews he smote the first-born of Egypt. And, be it observed, that the greatness of the numbers of the people of Hispaniola has nothing to do with the question. If we reject the three millions asserted by the Spanish historians, and, with Robertsonq reduce them to one million, we have then only to make a correspondent alteration in the figures above stated, the effect will remain the same.
Another observation that ought not to be passed over in silence, is the facility with which this population was reduced. In 1492 Hispaniola contained three millions of Indians. These are gradually traced by Robertson as decreasing to 60,000, to 14,000, and in no long time as being wholly "extirpated" and " extinguished."r Such depopulation would make every impartial friend to the human race think seriously whether there might not be some danger on that side of the question.
The next thing that strikes us in this survey of the South American history is the results attending upon the permanent administration of the Spanish vise-royalties of Mexico and Peru, when the first violence of conquest and cruelty had passed away. The attention of the government has now been directed for more than two hundred and fifty years, to the keeping up or increasing by every means they can devise the numbers of the native race. But, notwithstanding all the " humane solicitude and tender concern" that have been lavished for this purpose, notwithstanding the excellence of their code of laws, and the exemplary conduct of their hospitals, to which we must add the provisions by which early marriage is universally inforced, it will, I suppose, be admitted, that the native race has not been at best any wise increased during these two hundred and fifty years.
The same observation may be applied on the subject of negro slavery, as it exists in America and the West Indies. A multitude of precautions have been employed, particularly in South America, where the Spanish policy rates the negroes as a superior class of men to the descendants of the ancient holders of the empires of Mexico and Peru,s to multiply the race, but always with inadequate success. A constant succession of new importations from Africa has been judged to be indispensable.
Lastly, it is but just that some notice should be taken of the effects produced upon the mother-country, by the tide of emigration to Spanish America that then prevailed. This is an experiment that is past and over; and it is reasonable that we should endeavor to derive from it such instruction as may be applicable to the similar tide of emigration that has now been flowing for at least fifty years to the English settlements in North America.
One of the most notorious facts of modern history is the tremendous state of weakness and depopulation that has characterized the Spanish nation for the last two hundred years. Voltaire says, " If the discovery of America was a source of present advantage to Spain, it also inflicted on her great calamities. One of these was the depopulation of the parent-state by the number of emigrants necessary to give stability to her colonies."t The following is the view Robertson exhibits of this change.u "The Spaniards, intoxicated with the wealth which flowed in annually upon them, deserted the paths of industry to which they had been accustomed, and repaired with eagerness to the regions from which this opulence issued. By this rage of emigration the strength of the colonies was augmented, by exhausting that of the mother-country."u And again, " The inconsiderate bigotry of Philip III expelled at once near a million of his most industrious subjects [the Moors], at the very time when the exhausted state of the kingdom required some extraordinary exertion of political wisdom, to augment its numbers, and to revive its strength."
a. Ltttret Periannet, Lettre 108: Montaigne, Liv. III. Chap. vi. It will of course be understood that I place no reliance on these numbers. It is contrary to every idea I entertain on the subject, to suppose that any thing can be precisely known respecting it, unless after a long and patient investigation, checking every preceding report by the reports which follow, and the deductions which such collation shall afford. I therefore merely take the figures above put down, as the representative of some very high, but uncertain number, and as standing for the testimony of all those who first visited America, of whatever class or denomination, however barbarous, or however humane, as to the extraordinary population of the countries they saw.
b Las Casas, Destruycion de las Indias.
c Ibid. Voltaire, Hiitoirt Generate, Chap. 192.
d Robertson, History of America, Book VII.
e Raynal, Liv. VI.
f De Solis, Book III, Chap. xvi.
g Robertson, ubi supra.
h Raynal, Liv. VII.
i Robertson, ubi supra.
k Destruycion de las Indias
l Pinkerton, in his Geography, proceeding upon the authority of Estalla, the writer of a book of fictitious travels, would have us believe that, " deficient as the native population of Peru is at present, it was still more thin before the Spanish conquest." Modern Geography, third edition. Vol. II. p. 564.
Having referred to this geographer, I cannot dismiss the mention of him, without a passing observation upon the spirit in which his account of South America is written. He says [p. 304] " Certainly the Spaniards never sacrificed more victims than the Mexicans devoted to their Gods; and the clamors of pretended philosophy will often be found In opposition to the real cause of humanity which it aspires to defend. The cruelties of the Spaniards must by candor be partly imputed to the profusion of torture and human blood which every where met their eyes in this unhappy country; as such scenes change the very nature of man, and inflame him like the carnage of a field of battle.'' To say nothing of the gross misrepresentation contained in these lines, will Mr. Pinkerton assert that "the cruelties of the Spaniards'" were greater in Mexico, than among the innocent Peruvians, and the harmless Indians of Hispaniola?
A few pages after that in which he thus extenuates " the Spanish cruelties," Mr. Pinkerton exclaims [p. 320] against the infamous practice of smoking: " affording us between the two an admirable example of his notions respecting the moral sense.
m Book VIII.
n Book VI.
o Book VIII.
p Esprit des Loir, Liv. XXIII. Chap. vii.
q Book III
r Ibid.
s Robertson, Book VIII.
t Histoire Générale, Chap. 122.
x Book VIII.
• Book 1, Chapter 09 : Paraguay
To the examples which have now been detailed I cannot resist the inclination of adding the case of Paraguay, one of the most memorable establishments in the history of the world. The institutions of this portion of the New World emanated from a cultivated and learned fraternity, and whatever relates to them admits of an evidence the most complete and irresistible. The author of the Essay on Population passes over the affair of Paraguay in a smooth and quiet manner, with an incidental mention of half a page; a proceeding, I own, that appears to me a little suspicious, when I consider that the example of Paraguay would to many persons be alone sufficient to decide the question of Mr. Malthus's theory.
Paraguay was a settlement formed by the Jesuits in the interior of South America on the banks of the Rio de la Plata. They were shocked, as it was natural that religious men, and men separated from the contagion of the world, should be, at the atrocities acted by the Spaniards in this part of the world; and they formed a strenuous resolution to endeavor, by an experiment of the utmost gentleness and humanity, to atone to the unhappy natives, for the cruelties acted upon their countrymen in other parts of the continent. They took for their model the history and the happy constitution of Peru under the rule of her incas, and the whole of the transaction will redound to their immortal honor. Their establishment began about the year 1610, and the Jesuits were finally expelled from it by authority of the king of Spain in 1767.
What abbe Raynal says on the subject is so much to my purpose, that I shall do little more than transcribe it.
"It might be expected, that mankind would have most extraordinarily multiplied themselves, under a government where no individual was idle, and none were destroyed by excessive labor; where" the nourishment was wholesome, abundant, and equally distributed to all; where all were fully supplied with necessary clothing; where old men, widows, orphans, and the sick, were tended with a care unknown to the rest of the world ; where every one married of choice, and without motives of interest; where a numerous family of children was a consolation, without the possibility of being a burden; where a debauchery, inseparable from idleness, and which assails equally the rich and the poor, never hastened the approach of infirmities or old age; where nothing occurred to excite the artificial passions, or to oppose those which are conform. able to nature and reason; where the advantages of commerce were reaped, without bringing in their train the vises of luxury; where abundant magazines, and succors mutually communicated from tribe to tribe, insured them against famine and the inconstancy of the seasons; where the administrators of justice between man and man were never reduced to the sad necessity of condemning one individual to death, to disgrace, or to any punishment but what was momentary; where taxes and law-suits, two of the great sources of affliction to the human race, were utterly unknown: such a country, 1 say, might have been expected to prove the most populous on the face of the earth. It was not so.
"It was for a long time suspected, that the Jesuits understated the number of their subjects on account of the tribute at so much per head which the court of Spain imposed on them; and the council at Madrid manifested some uneasiness on this point. The most exact researches dissipated a suspicion not less injurious than groundless.
"Those who gave the society no credit for the integrity of their motives, spread a report that the Indians did not multiply, because they were consigned to the destructive labor of the mines. This accusation was more or less urged, for more than one hundred years. But the further the Spanish administration sought into the matter, the more they were convinced that there was no such thing.
"The oppressiveness of a government administered by monks, was sufficient, according to others, to arrest the multiplication of the Indians. This is surely abundantly incompatible with the charge which was also made against the missionaries, that they inspired the Indians with too blind a confidence in, and too excessive an attachment for their instructors. In the history of Paraguay it is found that numerous tribes repeatedly came with an importunate request that they might be admitted into this happy association, while no one of their districts ever shewed the smallest inclination to throw off the yoke. It would be too much to suppose that fifty Jesuits could hold two hundred thousand Indians in a forced submission, when they had it in their power at any time to massacre their pastors, or to fly into the woods.
"There are persons who have suspected that the Jesuits spread among their Indian subjects the doctrine of celibacy, which was so much venerated in the dark ages, and which has not yet entirely lost its reputation in the world. On the contrary, the missionaries never attempted to give their novices the idea of this mode of acquiring a place in heaven, against which the climate opposed insurmountable obstacles, and which would alone have sufficed to involve their best institutions in abhorrence.
"In fine, certain politicians have alleged, that the want of the institution of private property is alone sufficient to account for the smallness of the population of Paraguay. But this institution will always be found to detract from, as much as it forwards the cause of population; while the Indians of Paraguay, having always an assured subsistence, enjoyed the benefits of such an establishment, without its evils."
Having, one by one, refuted these different solutions for the difficulty, abbe Raynal, who nevertheless adheres to the received and orthodox opinion, that if a race of men have every advantage and every blessing afforded them for that purpose, they will not fail greatly to increase in numbers, though he did not dream of their increasing in a geometrical ratio, is reduced to strain his invention to account for so unexpected a phenomenon. The cause that he seems principally to rely on as having kept down theirnumbers,is the small-pox.
Mr. Malthus faintly hints, that such a thing had been heard of in Paraguay as scarcity, and adds, "On these occasions some of the missions [that is the Indian tribes] would have perished from famine, but for the assistance of their neighbors." Though how this could have happened in a country, where, as in Peru, the crops were divided into three equal portions, one for the purposes of religion, one for the expences of the government, and one for the subsistence of the people, it is not easy to divine.
• Book 1, Chapter 10 : Sparta
An accurate and instructive experiment on the subject of population appears to be afforded us by the institutions of Sparta. There is nothing more memorable in the history of mankind, than the code of laws digested by Lycurgus for that people; and this code seems to have operated in full vigor for five hundred years. Lycurgus, we are told, divided the entire lands of the republic into 39,000 equal portions; of which thirty thousand were distributed to the rural citizens of the state, and nine thousand to the inhabitants of the capital. One of the leading principles of his code was to regard marriage as a duty, and the having a family of children as honorable. The age of marriage was fixed; and is conjectured by Barthelemi to have been thirty for the males, and twenty for the female citizens.
"Those which would not marrie," says Plutarch, " Lycurgus made infamous by law. For it was not lawfull for such to be present, where those open games and pastimes were shewed naked. Furthermore the officers of the citie compelled such as would not marry, euen in the hardest time of the winter, to enuiron the place of these sportes, and to go vp and downe starke naked, and to sing a certaine song made for the purpose against them, which was: that justly were they punished, because that law they disobeyed. Moreouer, when such were old, they had not the honor and reuerence done thern, which old married men vsually receiued. Therefore there was no man that misliked, or reproued that, which was spoken to Dercillidas: albeit otherwise he was a noble captaine. For, coming into a presence, there was a young man which would not vouchsafe to rise and do him reuerence, nor to give him place for to sit downe: And worthily, quoth he, because thou hast not gotten a son, who may do so much for me in time to come."
Here then, if any where, we may expect to find a nation, the population of which should increase at an extraordinary rate. There were no poor under the institutions of Lycurgus. All were fed at a common table; all slept in public dormitories. The citizens received every encouragement, nay, as it appears, were absolutely enjoined, to marry; and they certainly felt no anxiety about the subsistence of their future offspring.
All this must be exceedingly puzzling to the followers of Mr. Malthus; were it not that they are relieved from the consequences of the institutions of Lycurgus generally considered, hy the recollection of one of these institutions, which they may regard as of sufficient force to check the evils of an overgrowing population. This was a law which prescribed the exposing of infants. We have already seen to what an extent this exposing must have been carried, if there is any truth in Mr. Malthus's hypothesis. Half the born at least must have constantly been destroyed by the operation of a positive statute. It is truly extraordinary, that Lycurgus should have overlooked so enormous an evil, and should have ordained that such multitudes of infants should be continually born into the world, for the mere purpose of being murdered. It is still more extraordinary that no one should have existed for five hundred years, with humanity enough to remedy so atrocious a mischief.
But let us consider for a moment this law concerning the exposing of infants, as it was practiced in the republic of Sparta. We have been told by some travelers from China, that the private individuals of that country are in the habit of having recourse to this expedient, to get rid of the trouble of maintaining their offspring, and that they continue to do this, notwithstanding all the precautions used by the government to prevent it. No practice resembling this ever took place among the Spartans. It is sufficiently evident, that Lycurgus entertained no apprehension of being overstocked with citizens, and that his law had no such object in view. "After the birth of euery boy, the father was no more maister of him; but he himselfe carried him to a certaine place called Lesche, where the eldest men of his kindred being set, did view the child: and if they found him faire, and well proportioned of all his limmes, and strong, they gaue order he should be brought vp. Contrariwise, if they found him deformed, misshapen, or leane, or pale, they sent him to be throwne in a deepe pit of water, which they commonly called Apothetes: holding opinion it was neither good for the child, nor yet for the commonweale, that it should liue, considering from his birth he was not wel made, nor given to be strong, healthfull, nor lustie of body all his life long. For this cause therefore the nurse, after their birth, did not wash them with water simply (as they do every where at that time), butwith water mingled with wine: and thereby did they proue, whether the complexion or temperature of their bodies were good or ill. For they suppose that children, which are given to haue the falling sicknesse, or otherwise to be full of rewmes and sicknesse, cannot abide washing with wine, but rather dry and pine away : as contrarily the other which are healthfull, become thereby the stronger and the lustier."
Two inferences clearly follow from this statement: first, that the laws of Lycurgus had in their view no purpose to keep do win the numbers of mankind: secondly, that a proceeding of this sort, though it might diminish, and that probably in an inconsiderable degree, the number of citizens in a given generation, was very indifferently adapted to reduce the number of births by which the next generation was to be supplied. In the same spirit Plutarch further relates: "First of all, Lycurgus willed that the maidens should harden their bodies with exercise of running, wrestling, throwing the lance, and casting the dart, to the end that the fruite wherewith they might be afterwards conceiued, taking nourishment of a strong and lusty body, should shoot out and spreade the better; and that they by gathering strength thus by exercises, should more easily away with the paines of child-bearing."
It is surely therefore of great importance to any theory on the subject of population, to watch the effects of the institutions of Sparta. And here fortunately we possess information from the highest authorities among the ancients, no less than those of Thucydides and Aristotle.
It appears plainly from the history of Thucydides, that the republic of Sparta was in the practice of increasing the number of her citizens by foreign accessions; and we may distinguish two modes in which this recruiting was effected. First, by admitting certain of the Helots, or slaves, to the rights of citizenship ; and secondly, by enrolling among her denizens individuals selected for this purpose from among the allies of Sparta. These latter were designed by the appellation of Neodamodes men added to the ranks of the state. In his history of the eleventh year of the Peloponnesian war, Thucydides expressly distinguishes these two species of recruits from each other: and the Neodamodes are again mentioned by him in his account of the nineteenth year of the war."
Aristotle is still more explicit. In the chapter of his Politics in which the republic of "Lacedaemon is examined, he states that, "Though the territory of the Lacedaemonians was sufficient for the maintenance of one thousand five hundred horse, and thirty thousand foot and in this estimate we may be sure he does not include the Helots, or slaves, by whom all the mechanical labor of the community was performed, yet the actual number of the citizens of the capital had fallen to one thousand. Thus," continues he, "the republic of Sparta fell, not by any single and particular calamity, but perished through the diminution of its numbers. In the earlier period of its history it is understood that they gave the rights of citizenship to the natives of other Grecian states, that by reason of their long wars their numbers might not be too much reduced; and I have heard that the people of the capital only, at one time amounted to ten thousand."
Aristotle indeed imputes the reduced numbers of the citizens of Sparta to a defect in the institutions of Lycurgus, who, he says, forbade that any citizen of Sparta should sell his own property, or buy that of another, but allowed them to give or bequeath it to any one they would: in consequence of which in process of time the lands of the republic fell into the hands of a few. But in this representation he stands alone. Plutarch, to whom posterity is principally indebted for the details of the subject, expressly states: "Lycurgus was not deceiued of his hope; for his city was the chiefest of the world in glory and honor of gouernement, by the space of fiue hundred yeares. For so long his citie kept his lawes without any change or alteration until king Agis, the son of Archidamus, began to reigne. Now in the reigne of king Agis, gold and siluer beganne first to creepe in againe to the citie of Sparta, by meanes of Lysander," in the close of the Peloponnesian war.
And again, in the Life of Agis, the son of Eudamidas, one hundred and fifty years later: "Then began the state of Lacedsemon first to be corrupted, and toleaue her ancient discipline, when the Lacedremonians, hauing subdued the empire of the Athenians that is, under Lysander, stored themselves and countrey both, with plenty of gold and siluer. But yet reseruing still the lands left vnto them by succession from their fathers, according vnto Lycurgus first ordinance and institution for diuision of lands among them: which ordinance and equalitie being inuiolably kept among them, did yet preserue the common wealth from defamation of diuerse other notorious crimes. Vntill the time of the authoritie of Epitadeus, one of the Ephores, a seditious man, and of proud conditions, who bitterly falling out with his owne sonne, preferred a law, that euery man might lawfully give his lands and goods whilst he lived, or after his death by testament vnto any man whom he liked or thought well of. Thus this man made a law to satisfie his anger, and others also did confirme it for covetousnesse sake, and so overthrew a noble ordinance."
Plutarch himself speaks, in the time of the latter Agis, of the citizens of Sparta as amounting only to seven hundred persons.
We have here therefore an evidence, such as must be of great weight with every reasonable man, respecting the population, or number of ck tizens of Sparta, during the successive periods of the history of that republic. It is certain that Lycurgus employed every means he could devise, to insure a numerous and healthy population. He encouraged marriage; he fixed a stigma on celibacy; and he provided for the support and education of the children that should be born, from the funds of the public His institutions continued unimpaired for the space of five hundred years. Yet it is apparent that "the state perished through the diminution of its numbers." During the interval in which Sparta makes the most splendid figure in the page of history, it was reduced to employ various expedients for the purpose of increasing the amount of its citizens by extrinsic accessions. In the period of which Aristotle treats the free inhabitants of the capital were reduced from ten thousand to one thousand men; and in the reign of the latter Agis, about one hundred years later than Aristotle, they counted no more than seven hundred citizens. These are phenomena which I conceive to be utterly incompatible with any hypothesis that affirms the rapid multiplication of the human species.
• Book 1, Chapter 11 : Rome
From Sparta let us pass to the republic of ancient Rome. In this state the subject of population seems to have been more studied and systematically attended to, than in any other upon record. The institution of the Census of which we have lately heard so much, as if it were a thing altogether new, together with the name, took its rise. in this city. The original regulation was, that the citizens capable of bearing arms, or in other words, all the males of a certain age, and entitled to the privileges of a Roman citizen, should be numbered every five years; and, though this ceremony was often interrupted through the occurrence of extraordinary affairs, yet its seventy-second repetition took place in the year of Rome 707, two years after the battle of Pharsalia.
As this is a species of document to which hitherto there exists no parallel, I have thought it worth while to insert here the sums of as many of the enumerations as are to be found in Livy, adding to them such as occur in the epitomes which remain of the lost books of Livy. I am not sure that the common construction, which I have adopted, is the true one, that these numbers represent the citizens capable of bearing arms; since to the enumeration for the year of Rome 288 it is added, that this was the true number, exclusive of male and female orphans, and to Metellus's enumeration for 622, that this was the true number, exclusive of minors and widows. But, whatever the numbers did or did not represent, and whatever uncertainty may exist on that head, they are plainly useful inasmuch as they enable us to compare one period with another. I will still less undertake, as Mr. Malthus does respecting the population of North America, that these increasing numbers, where they increase, are procured "from procreation only." It is not my intention to treat here of the various methods upon record, employed by the Roman government to recruit the number of her citizens. But we at least owe so much to the illustrious and singular example of the Roman republic, as not to forget her enumerations, whenever we desire to speculate fairly on the subject of population.
The first Census, or Lustration of the people of Rome, was made by Servius Tullius, the sixth king, who is said to have reigned from the year of Rome 174 to 219. The sum of his enumeration was 80,000 citizens. The rest are as follow:
| Lustrum. | Year of Rome. | Numbers. |
| 9 | 288 | 124,215 |
| 10 | 294 | 132,409 |
| 80 | 459 | 262,322 |
| 81 | 464 | 273,000 |
| 82 | 473 | 278,222 |
| 83 | 478 | 271,224 |
| 87 | 501 | 297,797 |
| 88 | 506 | 251,221 |
| 03 | 533 | 270,213 |
| 44 | 544 | 137,107 |
| 45 | 549 | 214,000 |
| 47 | 559 | 143,074 |
| 48 | 564 | 258,308 |
| 51 | 579 | 269,015 |
| 52 | 584 | 327,022 |
| 55 | 599 | 324,000 |
| 57 | 611 | 328,342 |
| 58 | 617 | 323,000 |
| 59 | 622 | 313,823 |
| 60 | 628 | 390,736 |
| 62 | 638 | 394,336 |
| 68 | 683 | 450,000 |
| 72 | 707 | 150,000 |
It is a subject therefore of some interest to inquire what were the laws of this celebrated republic upon the subject of population, to which their attention was so perpetually recalled. The old law, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which he says was in full force in the year ot Rome 277, required every citizen to marry, and to rear all his children. The laws further attached certain privileges to the state of a married man, others to him who had offspring, and others still more extensive to him who had three children. The citizen who had the greatest number of children, had on all occasions the preference, whether in suing for office, or in the exercise of office when obtained. The consul who had the most numerous offspring, had the priority in the magistracy, and took first his choice of the provinces, when his year was expired; the senator who had the largest family, was named first in the catalog of senators, and was first called upon to give his opinion on the subject in debate. In the year of Rome 622, fifteen years after the destruction of Carthage, the censors Metellus and Quint us Pompeius, finding the number of citizens reduced between this and the last enumeration, from 323,000 to 313, 823, took occasion to inforce the old law, and decreed, that " all should be obliged to marry, for the sake of procreating children." Julius Cesar, during his first consulship, and afterwards, adopted measures of a similar tendency. In a division he made of lands he reserved twenty thousand shares for such citizens as should have three or more children; and forbade the ladies, who were unmarried, or childless, to wear jewels : an excellent plan, says Montesquieu, for pressing the vanity of the fair into the service of the state. Augustus went still farther. He imposed new penalties on the unmarried, and increased the rewards of those who had children. He caused the speech of Metellus the Censor in the year 622 to be recited in the senate, the tenor of which was, " If the human race could be perpetuated without women, we should be delivered from a great evil: but, as the law of nature has decreed that we can neither live happily with them, nor subsist as a species without them, it is the duty of all to sacrifice their immediate repose to the good of the state." To which Augustus subjoined: " The city of Rome, of which we are so justly proud, does not consist of its houses, its porticoes, and public buildings; it is the men of Rome that constitute the city. We must not expect to see, what we read of in old fables, human beings spring forth out of the earth to undertake the business of the state. The object of my care is to perpetuate the commonwealth; and in this I call upon each member of the community to contribute his part."
It was in the same spirit, that the civic crown, given to him who should save the life of a citizen, was considered as the most glorious of all rewards among the Romans. Nor am I sure, that the Porcian law, passed in the year of Rome 453, which forbade the "infliction of stripes or death on a Roman citizen, did not owe its existence, at least in part, to this principle.
There has indeed often been quoted on the other side, the practice of which we read in the Roman history, of the exposing of infants. But this was subjected to regulations of the same nature in Rome, as in Sparta, from whence, according to Dionysius, the Romans are to be considered as deriving their origin. If a child was born monstrous or deformed, it was permitted to the father to expose it; but he was previously required to shew the child to five of his nearest neighbors, and obtain their sanction.
To sum up the whole of what relates to this subject in the republic of Rome. I see no cause why we should not reason as confidently upon the records of the Census in the Roman history, as upon the Census of the United States ot Noith America, or the enumerations of the island of Great Britain. The latter are affairs of yesterday. The American Census has been taken three times in a period of thirty years; the Enumeration of Great Britain twice. The United State of America have afforded a scene of continuous emigration, unparalleled in the history of the world. The difference of the two Enumerations in Great Britain is not more than may fairly be accounted for from the novelty of the experiment. The numbering of the citizens of Rome took place seventy-two times in a period of five hundred years.
In Rome every encouragement was given to marriage. The magistrates were perpetually anxious for the multiplication of her citizens. The number of her denizens was frequently augmented by enrolling fresh .recruits from among her allies. Yet we see to what perpetual fluctuations it was exposed. A single city affords certainly a very imperfect criterion respecting the multiplication .of mankind. Many will be continually retiring from the town into the country. Many more will flow from all parts of the country to people the metropolis. The stock of her population will be in a state of continual change. I do not think that the Roman Census supplies a demonstrative argument against the increase of mankind. But I think it is beyond comparison the most ample document from ancient history to prove, that if they increase at all, that increase must be effected by degrees very slow, if not almost insensible.
• Book 1, Chapter 12 : Miscellaneous Observations
SUCH was the policy. and such the experience of the most celebrated nations of antiquity on the subject of population. But Mr. Malthus has brought forward certain maxims of a very different tenor from Plato and Aristotle, writing of an imaginary republic: and upon them he remarks, " From these passages it is evident that Plato fully saw the tendency of population to increase beyond the means of subsistence.' And, again, "If he could propose to destroy certain children, and to regulate the number of marriages, his experience and his reasonings must have strongly pointed out to him the great power of the principle of increase, and the necessity of checking it." To which he adds, "Aristotle appears to have seen this necessity still more clearly."
Now, all this is surely sufficiently memorable. We have Lycurgus, and Romulus, and Metellus, and Julius Cæsar, and Augustus, and all the practical politicians of antiquity, marshaled on one side; and Plato and Aristotle, who amused themselves with framing imaginary republics, on the other: and Mr. Malthus chooses to adhere to the Utopian notions, or, as he phrases it, the "experience and reasonings" of the latter.
He calls Plato and Aristotle wise, because he thinks they fell into the same blunder as he has done. Would not any reasonable man wonder how the "experience of Plato" came to be so much greater than that of the immortal legislators of the republics of Sparta and of Rome, and of those who administered those republics for several hundred years after the frail bodies of their instituters had crumbled into dust?
But the fact is, that Plato and Aristotle never thought about the matter. They dreamed neither of a geometrical series, nor of any other series. They were guilty of no refinement in all this. They fixed the number of citizens in their imaginary republic; and all they meant in the passages the sagacity of which Mr. Malthus applauds, was, that if you are determined to have no more than five thousand citizens, you must take care not to have six. Thus far I have been inquiring merely into the human population of the world, or, more accurately speaking, of those parts of the world known by the names of Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America; and certainly in these we have found no reasons to persuade us to believe in Mr. Malthus's doctrine of the stupendous and alarming multiplication of mankind. Let us now take the question upon a somewhat larger scale. Let us look abroad, and see what happens among inferior animals.
In the first edition of the Essay on Population Mr. Malthus found no powers to check the calamitous multiplication of mankind, but vise and misery; to which he has since added moral restraint. No one of these three applies to the lower orders of animals. They are incapable of vise; I think Mr. Malthus will not say, that they refrain from procreation from a principle of prudence: and they are seldom found starved to death. Mr. Malthus has ventured to intrude himself into the mysteries of the administration of the universe, under the sole guidance of his geometrical and arithmetical ratios; and I shall not hazard much in asserting that this is a science of another order.
If there was no principle at work in the world but Mr. Malthus's "Principle of Population," I should expect to find things much otherwise than they are. I know not that we have the smallest reason to suppose the animal world more numerous than it was three thousand, or (putting revelation out of the question, and supposing the earth to have subsisted so long) thirty thousand years ago. Every blade of grass, it may be, is peopled; but we may wander for days together in some parts of the world, without seeing an animal so big as a ferret or a hare. Why is this? Why is not nature
-strangled with her waste fertility,
The earth cumbered, and the winged air darked with plumes?
The spawn of fishes is most copious, but we know not how much of this is ripened into perfect animals. All we seem to know is, that the eaters are not more numerous than they have been from the earliest records of time, and that the small animals which serve for food to the large ones, are not produced in so much greater plenty than formerly, as to occasion any disturbance to the goodly order of the universe. We know that several species of animals have totally perished. We read of the unicorn, the leviathan, the behemoth, the mammuth, and many others, and of some of them the skeletons, in whole or in part, subsist to this day. What animal was to prey on the mammuth, or to keep down the enormous multiplication of his species, by making use of him for food? If Mr. Malthus's system were true, the earth long ere this, ought to have been a habitation for mammuths only; or rather this enormous animal, after having devoured every other species, ought himself to have perished, and the globe to have become one vast solitude.
It is not my intention to pursue this speculation respecting the animal tribes. It is enough for me to have started the hint for the use of future enquirers. I return therefore to the topic of human population.
There is something much more mysterious in the principle by which the race of mankind is perpetuated, than any man has yet distinctly remarked: and he that shall sufficiently attend to it, instead of wondering that the globe has not long ago been overstocked with inhabitants, and seeking for vague and indefinite causes to account for the thinness of its population, will be apt rather to wonder why the human race has not by this time become extinct. What are the lessons that experience teaches us on this subject? Of the families that I knew in the earliest stage of my recollection, the majority have perished. The persons to whom I refer were men in the middle station of life, and Who lived at their ease. Why has their race become extinct? How few can trace their descent in the direct male line through many generations? The persons of the name of Smith, or White, or Brown, are indeed numerous; for these are not one family, but the name of old Was given at random to many. But take any name that is singular, Shakespear, or Malthus, or Gildon, how many of that name will you find in the muster-roll? Upon the principle of the Essay on Population, the inhabitants of this country ought long ago to have been a people of nobles: the nobility with us, like the mammuth in the brute creation, ought to have eaten up the rest; for they had ample encouragement to multiply, which the peasant and the mechanic could scarcely in the smallest degree partake. Yet our nobility are in a striking degree new families, scarce any of them taking precedence of the bastards of Charles the Second. Such is the order of the universe. "One generation," as Solomon says, one family, and one race of men, "passeth away, and another cometh;" but the human race survives these vicissitudes. In Scotland, titles are old, because they descend to heirs-general, and surnames are widely diffused, because it was the custom of the head of a clan to give his own name to all his followers.
A passage extremely to this purpose, on the subject of the town of Berne, occurs in Mr. Malthus's Essay, who has indeed always appeared to me a man of a candid mind; so much to, that in my opinion it would not have been difficult for any one of sufficient leisure and perspicacity, to construct an answer to the Essay on Population from the Essay itself. The passage purports to be an extract from the Statistique de la Suisse, in four volumes, octavo, published at Lausanne, in 1766. "In the town of Berne, from the year 1583; to 1654, the sovereign council had admitted into the Bourgeoisie 487 families, of which 379 became extinct in the space of two centuries, and in 1783 only 108 of them remained. During the hundred years from 1684 to 1784, 207 Bernese families became extinct. From 1624 to 1712, the Bourgeoisie was given to 80 families. In 1623 the sovereign council united the members of 112 different families, of which 58 only remain."
It has sometimes occurred to me whether Mr. Malthus did not catch the first hint of his geometrical ratio from a curious passage of Judge Blackstone, on consanguinity, which is as follows:
"The doctrine of lineal consanguinity is sufficiently plain and obvious; but it is at the first view astonishing to consider the number of lineal ancestors which every man has within no very great number of degrees: and so many different bloods is a man said to contain in his veins, as he hath lineal ancestors. Of these he hath two in the first ascending degree, his own parents; he hath four in the second, the parents of his father and the parents of his mother; he hath eight In the third, the parents of his two grandfathers and two grandmothers; and by the same rule of progression, he hath an hundred and twenty-eight in the seventh; a thousand and twenty-four in the tenth; and at the twentieth degree, or the distance of twenty generations, every man hath above a million of ancestors, as common arithmetic will demonstrate.
"This will seem surprising to those who are unacquainted with the increasing power of progressive numbers; but is palpably evident from the following table of a geometrical progression, in which the first term is 2, and the denominator also 2; or, to speak more intelligibly, it is evident, for that each of us has two ancestors in the first degree; the number of which is doubled at every remove, because each of our ancestors had also two immediate ancestors of his own.
| Lineal Dergees. | Number of Ancestors. |
| 1 | 2 |
| 2 | 4 |
| 3 | 8 |
| 4 | 16 |
| 5 | 32 |
| 6 | 64 |
| 7 | 128 |
| 8 | 256 |
| 9 | 512 |
| 10 | 1024 |
| 11 | 2048 |
| 12 | 4096 |
| 13 | 8192 |
| 14 | 16384 |
| 15 | 32768 |
| 16 | 65536 |
| 17 | 131072 |
| 18 | 262144 |
| 19 | 524288 |
| 20 | 1048576 |
This argument however from JudgeBlackstone of a geometrical progression would much more naturally apply to Montesquieu's hypothesis of the depopulation of the world, and prove that the human species is hastening fast to extinction, than to the purpose for which Mr. Malthus has employed it. An ingenious sophism might be raised upon it, to shew that the race of mankind will ultimately terminate in unity. Mr. Malthus indeed should have reflected, that it is much more certain that every man has had ancestors, than that he will have posterity, and that it is still more doubtful, whether he will have posterity to twenty, or to an indefinite number of generations.
Another remark also it is proper to make on this extract. Judge Blackstone does indeed shew, that the population of the world is, in one sense, the proper subject of a geometrical ratio. But his ratio is essentially different from that of Mr. Malthus. The Commentator on the Laws of England does not pretend to assign any period of time, any precise numbers of years, to his doubling; whereas the Essay on Population not only affirms a doubling by direct generation, which is not true; but it is also of the essence of the doctrine there delivered, that this doubling shall take within a limited and assignable portion of time.
In treating on this subject of population, and considering whether the small number of the present inhabitants of the earth is altogether to be ascribed to the inroads of vise and misery, it is certainly not wholly unworthy of our attention to observe, that some of those countries from which we have drawn our examples of the scarcity of men, were among the countries in which liberty and equality most abounded, and where distress was the least known. The two most flourishing states of ancient Greece, were Sparta and Athens; and in both the laborious occupations were assigned to slaves, while the free citizens lived in comparative idleness. In Sparta there was little motive to industry, as all property was in common: a citizen was there thought to be disgraced, if he practiced any of the arts. In Athens Solon made an exception in favor of statuary and painting, which were therefore termed liberal artse. Some of the citizens of Athens were enterprising, and sought to accumulate wealth; but the greater part were contented with the condition in which they were born. In the Symposium of Xenophon, a curious representation of the state of the Athenians in this respect is put into the mouth ofone Charmides. "When I was wealthy," says he, "I was exposed to perpetual demands for the support of government, or for the expenoes of the theater. I could not go beyond the confines of Attica, without incurring the suspicion of the magistrates, and was obliged to court the favor of the vilest informers. Now, on the contrary, that I have become poor, I go where I chuse; I am treated with respect and deference by the rich, who regard me with the same terror I once felt for others; and, when in want, I can require of the state to support me." These were the countries in which to have tried the geometrical ratio; and it was tried. The constitution of Sparta endured five hundred years; with what effect we have seen. The government of Rome was perhaps the happiest for its citizens, and certainly produced, while in its vigor, the greatest quantity of true energy and heroic virtue, of any government that ever existed. Nor will the government of the canton of Berne be cited among those that have most oppressed their citizens.
In the Grecian republics the increase of man. kind could not have been kept down in their citizens by want, for every citizen had a right to call on the state to support him. And in Sparta when the citizens had all been fed, there was a numerous train of Helots, by whom the mechanical labor of the community was performed, and who we mnv be sure would not all be starved. The citizens therefore, the decrease of whom I have exemplified in striking instances, were, it is certain, always plentifully fed, and in that and every other way that might seem to have the greatest promise of success, encouraged to multiply their species.
Of Hispaniola and Peru, such as they were when first visited by their European invaders, our accounts are not perhaps perfectly satisfactory and accurate: but I think we know enough to enable us to pronounce that, if vise and misery were all they had to depend upon for the stability of their condition, and the well being of the whole, they were very slenderly provided in these respects. The case is different with respect to the missions of Paraguay. These fall properly and fully within the province of history. We labor under no want of reeords respecting them. And I should therefore apprehend that, as far as the evidence of general history is to be admitted for proof, the doctrine of the geometrical ratio was fully tried in that celebrated establishment.
It should seem then that vise and misery are not altogether such powerful agents, and have by no means done so much for the well being of society as Mr. Malthus imagines. All the political establishments which have just been enumerated, contrived to do with a very small portion of them; and we have no reason to believe respecting any one of them, that they were overwhelmed with the multitude of their citizens.
Indeed it is a strange hypothesis, so violent that one wonders that it could for a moment have imposed on human credulity, so shocking that it might drive all reasonable beings to despair, to suppose the agency of vise and misery to be so active and gigantic, that by those alone or, as Mr. Mai thus expressively terms it, by " every cause which in any degree contributes to shorten the natural duration of human life," three times as many children die in years of nonage in the Old World as in the United States of America, and that thus and thus only our population is kept down to a level, while, if we were as virtuous and happy as the citizens of that republic, it would not fail to double itself in less than twenty-five years. Every reader, I apprehend, who has gone thus far along with me, will feel satisfied, that there is some gross mistake in Mr. Malthus's statement respecting the population of North America: and it will be the business of the Fourth Book of the present work to endeavor to lay open the sources of that mistake.
• Book 1, Chapter 13 : Views of Man and Society which Result from the Preceding Facts
I turn now from the dreary speculations of Mr. Malthus, to the venerable recollection of what has been the creed of all ages and nations upon this interesting subject.
Mr. Malthus's doctrine is directly calculated to bring our human nature into "hatred and contempt;" a crime I should think somewhat greater than that which Mr. Pitt made a law to counteract, "the bringing hatred and contempt upon the government of the united kingdom." One of his distinguishing positions is the necessity of warning men of the evil of marrying, except the few who, in the vicissitude of sublunary things, shall conceive they have a fair "prospect of being able to support a family:" and he recommends that those who slight this warning, shall, with the innocent offspring they bring into the world, be "left to the punishment of Nature, the punishment of want." Almighty author of us all! what a thing is man that thou hast made, the existence of which, in great numbers, and without strict limitations, is to be counteracted by such sharp menaces, menaces that it is recommended should by no means be left as a dead letter!
What is the idea we were taught of old to conceive of this creature, man?
"Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet; all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea."
"Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet; all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea." "I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there were none of them."
I know not whether I shall be excused in putting the modern language of an uninspired writer, by the side of these venerable authorities.
Shakespear says: "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason; how infinite in faculties; in form and moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel; in apprehension how like a God; the beauty of the world; the paragon of animals!"
An author of infinitely inferior talents has delivered a similar idea with exquisite beauty.
I like thy frame: the fingers of the Gods
I see have left their mastery upon thee;
They have been tapering up thy human form;
And the majestic prints at large appear.
It has accordingly been held in all ages, that it was one of the first duties of a citizen, to give birth to his like, and bring offspring to the state. It is the voice of nature, and the law of nature, that every man should rejoice in posterity; however perverted institutions may have often turned this blessing, as it stands in the law of human feelings and human understanding, into a calamity.
As such it is perpetually spoken of in the records of the Christian religion.
"As arrows in the hand of a giant," says David (and be it remembered that he was a statesman, a legislator, and a king),"even so are little children. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: he shall not be ashamed, but he shall speak with the enemies in the gate."
Again : "Blessed is he that feareth the Lord: his wife shall be as a fruitful vine in the sides of his house; his children shall be like olive plants round about his table."
Solomon, the son and successor of David, was plainly of the same opinion. He says," Children's childien are the crown of old men; and they are the glory of their father.
The historian of the Judges of the Jewish naition has recorded his opinion on this subject, by his manner of narrating a fact. Of Abdon, one of the Judges, he has handed down the memory merely in one brief patriarchal painting. "He had forty sons, and thirty grandsons, which rode on threescore and ten asses' and ten colts."
It has already appeared that all the great legislators and enlightened statesmen that ever existed, have seen the subject of population in the light in which it is here exhibited. It is only a few speculators in their closets, a Plato, an Aristotle, and a Malthus, that have regarded it in different points of view.
The language of Augustus is that of all practical politicians. "The city of Rome does not consist of its houses, its porticoes, and its public buildings; it is the men of Rome that constitute the city. The object of my cave is to perpetuate the commonwealth; and in this I call upon each member of the community to contribute his part."
The amiable and enlightened author of Telemachus expresses himself thus. [The admonition is addressed by Mentor, to a king who had been spoiled by false ideas of greatness and renown.] "Know that you are a king, only just so far as you have men over whom you reign. It is not extent of territory that makes the monarch, but the number of human beings by whom that territory is peopled. Let the country in which you rule be moderate in extent; cover it with innumerable inhabitants; let those inhabitants be sober, industrious and active; and your power, your prosperity, and your glory will be greater, than those of all the conquerors that ever existed."
Sir Richard Steele, in the Spectator , has treated the same subject, in that fine vein of deep feeling and pure bonhommie in which he so marvelously excelled. "There is," says he, speaking in the person of an imaginary correspondent, "another accidental advantage in marriage which has fallen to my share; I mean the having a multitude of children. These I cannot but regard as very great blessings. When I see my little troop before me, I rejoice in the additions 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 pyramid at my own expense, or published as many volumes of the finest wit and learning."
How refreshing is this! It is a return to nature and human feelings. It is in the nature of a letter of license, permitting man to be man, allowing him to enlarge himself, and to spread into all the ramifications of social existence. Let not the system of the universe be calumniated! There is a sublime harmony between man as an individual, and man collectively considered. Private and public feelings, our love of ourselves and of all that is nearest to us, and our love of our country and our species, all operate to the same end. The interests of the one and of the other, through the whole extent of their great outline, coincide.
For twenty years the heart of man in this island has been hardening through the theories of Mr. Malthus. What permanent effect this may have upon the English character I know not: but I am sure it was high time that it should be stopped. We were learning, 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, particularly on a little child. 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 being with the eye of a painter, as a delicious subject of contemplation, with the eye of a moral philosopher, as a machine capable of adorning the earth with magnificence and beauty, or with the eye of a divine, 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 difficult one, was, how he was to be maintained? It was not enough that he was born with the implements 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 consummation of the orb we dwell in) from being born into the world.
The great tendency and effect of Mr. Malthus's book were to warn us against making mankind happy. Such an event must necessarily lead, according to him, to the most pernicious consequences. A due portion of vise and misery was held out to us as the indispensable preservative of society, at the same time that the author himself did not venture to tell us how much of these murderous ingredients was necessary. His doctrine immediately led to the reversing all that had hitherto been held to be genuine politics, or sound moral philosophy. The theories of Mr. Malthus then being destroyed, the science of politics returns to its just and legitimate purpose, the inquiring how mankind in society, by every means that can be devised, may be made happy. Let us dismiss, now and forever, the heart of flint that has disgraced the beginning of the nineteenth century, and take to ourselves hearts of flesh, and pulses that shall beat responsive to all that can interest or agitate any one of our fellow-creatures.
The law against murder has two sources. First, as all law is, or is intended to be, expressive of the will of the community, murder is forbidden, because the safety of each is the interest of all; that which is perpetrated on one, may next be the lot of him, or me, or any. So far it is a question of selfish calculation, on the narrowest scale. But the law is also founded upon a deep feeling of the worth and estimation of man in the abstract; a feeling confirmed by reason, and recognized, as has already been said, by all enlightened legislators. "Who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature, God's image."
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore.
Should I repent. But once put out thy light,
Thou cunningest pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat,
That can thy light relume.
The sentiment that teaches us to hold the life of man at a cheap rate, has been the source of all the crimes of statesmen and warriors. We have been told of monopolists, who have bought up all the corn of a country in a period of famine, and seen with indifference thousands perishing around them, while they accumulated an immense fortune. Bonaparte in the year 1812 marched with an army of nearly four hundred thousand men into Russia, and, after a campaign of four months, escaped alone with difficulty back to Paris, while scarcely a remnant of his army survived the disasters into which he had led them: his pursuit was glory. But that of the disciples of Mr. Malthus is almost without a motive: they proceed with all the coldness of calculation, and expect neither wealth nor fame as the reward of their achievement. The check which the Author of the Essay on Population requires to keep down the numbers of mankind,is summed up by him in this expressive phrase; "Every cause, which in any degree contributes to shorten the natural duration of human life:" in other words, whatever thing, that by sickness, by pain, by hunger, by hardship and calamity, wastes away, and slowly, with agony and throes, extinguishes the taper of existence.
Fortunately however the system of the universe is guiltless of these calculations. An inexperienced philanthropist might have wished for the human species an easy mode of multiplication. Looking upon the vast tracts of the earth that have been naked and abandoned for ages, and considering that, at the lowest computation, the globe of earth would subsist twenty human beings for one of that handful that is at present scattered on its surface, he might have wished for a rapid mode of filling its desolate places. Of the hundreds of speculative men who have ascribed to our nature the power of such multiplication, scarcely one, till within these twenty years, has prognosticated any evil to result from it. But that power from which the human species derived its existence, has disposed of the matter otherwise. There are two considerations by which any commodity may be rendered precious. One is its intrinsic beauty and excellence; and the other the difficulty with which it is to be procured. In both ways the price of our human nature seems to be enhanced. We are not only " fearfully and wonderfully made," the adapted dwelling of exquisite beauty and indescribable grace, if only the external form of man is considered, and by our mind capable of all excellent and astonishing things: but, beside this, it to this day remains a problem, whether the numbers of our species can be increased. We are warned therefore to make much of this precious creature, man, to nourish it in want, to support it in distress, to relieve it by every attention and every liberality, on no account to waste a treasure so inexpressibly more estimable than the mines of Peru; and, which is most of all, to raise this only inventive creature on the face of the earth, this creature susceptible of unlimited improvement, to all the perfection, whether of wisdom or happiness, whether in his individual or social capacity, that all our vigils and all our meditations can suggest to our performance.
• Book 2, Chapter 01 : Proofs and Authorities for the Doctrine the Essay on Population
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OF THE POWER OF INCREASE IN THE NUMBERS OF THE HUMAN SPECIES AND THE LIMITATIONS OF THAT POWER.
THE object I proposed to myself in the preceding Book was to bring together such views on the subject of population, as might be inferred from the actual numbers of mankind in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America, either in ancient or modern times, as far as any clear notions might be obtained on that subject; and hence to conclude what was the amount of probability,
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as arising from those facts, for or against Mr. Malthus's theory. And I am willing to believe, that every reader who has thus far gone, along with me, is satisfied, that, as far as probability goes, nothing can be more improbable, or do greater violence to all the facts handed down to us in history, than the principles of the Essay on Population.
I shall now attempt to go more deeply and scientifically into the question, and endeavor to ascertain what is the law of our nature respecting the increase of our species or otherwise, so far-as that law can be inferred from the different documents and statistical tables, which the curiosity of governments, or the industry of men writing on the subjects of political economy, have accumulated and given to the world.
The whole system and doctrine of Mr. Malthus's Essay proceeds upon a very simple position; the tendency of human beings to multiply beyond the means of subsistence: and he plainly thinks that he grants to his opposers more than in argument they are entitled to claim, when he States that "population, where it is unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio;"a while "the means of subsistence, under circumstances the most favorable to human industry, could not possibly be made to increase faster than in an
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arithmetical ratio,"b that is, to "be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what it at present produces."c
To make this idea more intelligible to every reader, Mr. Malthus proceeds to state the effect of his two ratios in figures, and observes, "If we take the whole earth as the subject of our calculation, emigration will of course be excluded. Let us suppose the present population of the earth equal to a thousand millions; the human species, if the principle of population remained unchecked, would increase every twenty-five years, as the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and the subsistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. In two centuries the population would be to the means of subsistence as to 256 to 9; in three centuries as 4096 to 13; and in two thousand years the difference would be almost incalculable."d
As Mr. Malthus's position is simple, his proof is not less distinguished for brevity.e It is, I think, all summed up in the following sentence: "In the Northern States of America [meaning I believe, the northern parts of the republic, known under the name of The United States of North America], the population has been found to double itself, for above a century and a
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half successively, in less than twenty-five years."f To which he adds presently after: "This is a rate of increase in which all concurring testimonies agree, and has repeatedly been ascertained to be from procreation only."g
This, and this only, is the entire basis upon which Mr. Malthus's doctrine relies for its stability. He has added however certain authorities, upon which he founds his expectation of inducing the public to acquiesce in his statement. They are these:
1. Dr. Franklin. The statement of this author as quoted by Mr. Malthus,h is, "There is no bound to the prolific nature of plants or animals, but what is made by their crowding and interfering with each other's means of subsistence. Were the face of the earth 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."
The Essay from which this extract is taken, is entitled, "Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, &c." It occupies nine pages in the late edition of Franklin's Works, 1806,i and was written in 1731, when the author was twenty-five years of age.
2. Dr. Ezra Styles. This gentleman published
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in Boston, New England, in 1761, a Sermon on Christian Union, "some extracts from which Mr. Malthus has had an opportunity to seek." Dr. Styles, it seems, "speaking of Rhode Island, says, that though the period of doubling for the whole colony is twenty-five years, yet that it is different in different parts, and within land is twenty and fifteen years." k
3. Dr. Price.l This however seems not to be an authority distinct from the preceding. Dr. Price, in a letter to Dr. Franklin, which was read to the Royal Society, April 27, 1769, and published in the Philosophical Transactions, Vol. LIX, and again republished by the author in his Observations on Reversionary Payments,m says to his correspondent, "A doubling of population in eighty-four years is, as you, sir, well know [probably referring to Dr. Franklin's Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind above-quoted], a very slow increase, compared with that which takes place among our colonies in America."n At the bottom of the page Dr. Price refers us for further information to Dr. Styles's Sermon.
4. Euler. Who, in a Table inserted in Sussmilch's Grottliche Ordnung, "calculates, on a mortality of one in thirty-six, that if the births
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be to the deaths in the proportion of three to one, the period of doubling will be only twelve years and four-fifths."o
5. Sir William Petty. Who "supposes a doubling possible in so short a time as ten years."p
Being dissatisfied with Mr. Malthus's authorities, and finding some of his references inaccurate, I addressed that gentleman in the following letter:
Sir,
October 24, 1818.
I am at this moment engaged in a careful examination of your Essay on Population, and may probably commit something to the press on the subject. I therefore take the liberty to request your answer to the following question.
In page 7 of the fifth edition. Vol. I, you say, "In the northern states of America, — the population has been found to double itself, for above a century and a half successively, in less than twenty-five years." Will you have the goodness to state to me by letter your authority for this assertion?
I am, Sir, very respectfully,
your most obedient servant.
To this letter Mr Malthus returned me an immediate answer.
East India College, Hertford,
Oct. 25, 1818.
Dear Sir,
Upon referring to the passage you mention in your letter, I find that the authorities on which I principally rest, are the details mentioned by Dr. Price in his Observations on Reversionary Payments, pp. 282, ∓c.,q and the pamphlet of Dr. Styles to which he particularly refers I afterwards saw some statements and calculations, which make the period of doubling only twenty years from the first settlement of America to the year 1800. But in the fifth edition, I find that the reference is made wrong, and that it should have been, Book ii. Ch. 13, instead of 11.
To this note, which occurs Vol. II, p. 194, of the fifth edition, I would refer you for my principal authorities at the time I published the quarto edition; but since that, the late Statistical View of America, by T. Pitkin, in which are contained the three regular Census's of 1790, 1800, and 1810, together with an estimation in 1749, more than confirms what was there stated. Comparing the two Census's of 1790 and 1810 together, it appears that the population during
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that period doubled itself in about twenty-three years; and from the estimate in 1749, in about the same time or less. This would admit ample allowance for foreign immigration.
Truly yours.
a Vol. I, p.9.
b P. 1.
c P. 13.
d P. 15.
e In the Introduction to Book I, I have said, "He neither proves, nor attempts to prove what he asserts." And this is the accural late cf the case.
f P. 7.
g P. 9.
h P. 3.
i Vol. II, p.383.
k Essay on Population, Vol. II, p.194.
l Vol. I, p. 7; Vol. II, p. 194.
m Vol. II, p. 3. seventh edition.
n Price's Observations, Vol. II, p.49.
o Essay on Population, Vol. I, p. 8.
p Ibid. Mr. Malthus refers us for this statement to Sir W. Petty's Political Arithmetic, where it is not to be found. It occurs in his Essay concerning the Growth of the City of London.
q I believe, Vol. II, p.3, ∓c. of the Seventh Edition.
• Book 2, Chapter 02 : Animadversions on Mr. Malthus's Authorities
HAVING thus therefore got together all the authorities that Mr. Malthus has produced, or is able to produce, in support of his fundamental positions, let us proceed to examine into their validity and amount.
The first is Dr. Franklin. What he says on the subject of fennel, is of a very vague nature I do not imagine that any one will ascribe to this bare assertion the force of demonstration if I had heard it for the first time in conversation, and without having previously reflected on the subject, I should have answered, "Very likely." No more. The proposition is specious enough: but appearances are sometimes deceitful. Probability is not always on the side of truth. We are not sufficiently acquainted with the natural history of fennel, and of fennel-seed, to entitle us to pronounce positively. He that should undertake to "overspread the whole earth" with fennel, and that felt quite confident of the success of his experiment, I should have been apt to pronounce a very bold man.
But, when Dr. Franklin proceeds from this hazarded assertion about fennel, to say, " Were Jie earth empty of other inhabitants, it might in a few ages be' replenished from ore nation only, as for instance with Englishmen," he makes a very wide step indeed. There is a great difference between the sowing of seed, and the multiplication of men. I have myself counted eighty grains of corn, growing on one stalk, from a single seed, in the course of a season. The sowing of vegetables is a very simple thing; and we are apt to think that we can calculate with some certainty on the result. And yet, I own I cannot feel an undoubting confidence in Dr. Franklin's crop of millions of acres of fennel.
The multiplication of mankind however is an affair of another sort, and governed by different laws. It has by many persons been believed that we do multiply; but what was the rate of increase, no one, till the year 1731, had ventured to pronounce. It may be that I want the robust nerves of Dr. Franklin and Mr. Malthus; but I own, if the human species were by some tremendous casualty swept from every other part of the globe, except this island, I should not like to witness the experiment, whether or no its present population could be replenished with Englishmen only.
I do not know how the world was peopled at first. We are told, that we are all descended from a single pair: but we are not entitled to reason from this memorable history, to the everyday occurrences of life. The creation of the world, and the peopling of the earth, are all a miracle. The settling of countries and the dispersion of mankind were conducted by the immediate hand of the creator. Besides, human life, it is written, was originally of the duration of nearly a thousand years; and this may be supposed to have made a wide difference in the rate of multiplication.
But Dr. Franklin and Mr. Malthus are both of them calculators and philosophers. They do not pretend to appeal to miracles for the truth of their theories. Mr. Malthus in particular deals largely in statistical tables, and collections of the registers of births, marriages and deaths, in these latter ages of the world; and to these I shall presently take leave to accompany him.
Dr. Franklin I own has obtained a great name. But, when he launches into assertions so visionary as those here recited, and above all, when I recollect what tremendous and heartsickening consequences Mr. Malthus has deduced from these assertions, I must say that a great name goes with me for nothing, and 1 must subject his positions to a strict examination.
Dr. Franklin is in this case particularly the object of our attention, because he was the first man that started the idea of the people of America being multiplied by procreation, so as to "double their numbers every twenty years." Dr. Franklin, born at Boston, was eminently an American patriot; and the paper from which these extracts are taken, was expressly written to exalt the importance and glory of his country.
The following is the way in which he supports his hypothesis respecting the population of America. "If it is reckoned in Europe that there is but one marriage per annum among one hundred persons, perhaps we may here reckon on two; and if in Europe they have but four births to a marriage, we may here reckon eight." It were to be wished, that Dr. Franklin had given his reasons for this amazing superiority in the fruitfulness of the marriage-bed on the other side the Atlantic. Is it any thing in the climate? Dr. Franklin says something respecting the late marriages of Europe; and this we shall shortly have occasion to examine. But he could hardly have thought that all European brides were so old, as from that circumstance alone to account for their having no more than half the offspring of the brides of America. If this paper were without a date, I should have thought it had been written long before twenty-five years of age.
It is not a little curious, that the next authority upon which we are called upon to believe in Mr. Malthus's fundamental positions, is a Sermon delivered sixty years ago, by a puritanical preacher in Connecticut, which Sermon Mr. Malthus never saw.
To make a just estimate of the authority of Sir William Petty, it is necessary to quote his words. "Suppose there be 600 people; in natural possibility this number may yield near 75 births annually. For by some late observations the teeming females between. 15 and 44 years of age, are about 180 of the said 600, and the males of between 18 and 59, are about 180 also, and every teeming woman can bear a child once in two years; from all which it is plain, that the births may be 90 per annum, and (abating 15 for sickness, young abortions, and natural barrenness) there may remain 75 births, which is an eighth of the people; which births by some observations we have found to be actually but a two-and-thirtieth part, or but a quarter of what is thus shewn to be naturally possible. Now, according to this reckoning, if the births may be 75 of 600 annually, and the burials but 15, then the annual increase of the people will be 60; and so the said 600 people may double in 10 years."
Now in this passage three things are assumed: first, the amount of teeming women in any given number of people; secondly, the amount of deaths annually; and thirdly, the amount of births annually, that are, according to Sir William, "in natural possibility." Without going into the accuracy of the amounts in the two former instances, the first thing worthy of notice is that these two amounts are given as founded upon actual observations, while for the third the author confessedly has resort to the .regions of possibility. But in this there is no parity.
And what does Sir William Petty mean by "natural possibility?" How can we know any thing of possibilities, as to the natural history of man, but from actual'" observation? Sir William Petty assumes that every female between 15 and 44 years of age is what he calls a teeming female, or in other words capable of bearing a child once in two years, and that 15 out of 90 is an ample allowance for natural barrenness, for abortions, and for such indisposition, of whatever sort, on the part of the female, as should produce a temporary incapacity for child-bearing. He further supposes that each female shall be the mother of fourteen children, or, more accurately speaking of fourteen children and a half; for, if the teeming women are constantly in the proportion ot 180, and the number of children born annually stands as Sir William Petty has set it down, then it is obvious that every teeming woman, in other words, every woman between 15 and 44 years of age, must bear a child every second year. Now where does Sir William find this? And, if I were to say, that it is a " natural impossibility," that every woman between these ages should do thus, should I not have as much, or rather a great deal more, reason on my side?
So much for Sir William Petty's "possible doubling of mankind in so short a time as ten years."
I next proceed to consider the authority of Euler, who, according to Mr. Malthus, " calculates, on a mortality of 1 in 36, that if the births be to the deaths in the proportion of 3 to 1, the period of doubling will be only 12 years and 4-5ths."
The name of Euler is truly imposing. He is one of the most eminent mathematicians of modern times, and is worthy to be ranked with the greatest geniuses in that science in ages past. Buc it is truly to very little purpose that the name of Euler is introduced into this question. And I am persuaded, if he could have been aware of the use that would be made of his authority, he would have taken effectual care that it should not be employed for the purpose of imposing unfounded theories on the world.
Euler never wrote a book on the population of the earth, and the multiplication of the human species. If he had, I cannot but believe that he would have looked with a penetrating eye and a persevering temper into the subject. He would not have been discouraged by its intricacies; but would have spent years of patient labor in collecting all the documents and tables that could be found, and by careful comparison have endeavored to deduce from them such results as might be worthy of the confidence of future generations. He has done no such thing.
How comes his name then to be mixed up with the subject of which Mr. Malthus treats?
A writer, to whose pages we are considerably indebted, and who appears to have been extremely assiduous in the execution of his task, John Peter Sussmilch, member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin, undertook a work, entitled, Die Gottliche Ordnung, &c.; or, The Order of Divine Providence, as Displayed in the Births, Deaths, and Increase of the Human Race, which was first published in 1765 in two volumes octavo, and has since been enlarged into three. This work is replete with statistical tables; and the author was at indefatigable pains in collecting all the documents that could throw light on his subject. His volumes are therefore of great value as a book of reference. The professed object of Sussmilch was, first to demonstrate the possibility of an increase in the population of the earth, and then to recommend the adoption of such means as he was able to suggest for realizing that increase.
The great merit of this writer is patience and perseverance; and he appears to have been laudably diffident of his own abilities in matters of mathematical calculation. He therefore applied to Euler. Euler was a man of the highest reputation in the exact sciences, and had been employed by Frederic the Second, in the beginning of his reign, to assist in remodeling and giving new life and vigor to his Academy. Euler, with that liberality which ought always to be the characteristic of a man of genius, lent himself to the request of his brother-academician. For this purpose it was no wise necessary that he should study the subject of population; nor did he attempt to do so. He was responsible only for the fidelity of his calculations. Sussmilch gave him certain questions, gratuitous and arbitrary suppositions as to an imaginary multiplication of mankind; and Euler worked the sums. Every one therefore may easily judge, with what propriety Euler is brought forward as an authority on the occasion. As well might Bonnycastle in his Introduction to Algebra be cited to prove that a gentleman gave four millions five hundred thousand pounds for a horse, because he has shewn that, upon a certain computation, if adopted, that would actually have been the price of the horse.
The computation of Euler to which Mr. Malthus refers, stands thus. "If in any country there are 100,000 persons living, and the annual mortality is one in thirty-six, then, supposing the annual proportion of deaths to births to be variously, as 10 to 11, 10 to 12, and so on, up to as 10 to 30, what will be the numbers of persons who will yearly be added to the society, and what will be the number of years required for the original 100,000 persons to become 200,000?" Euler's answer is that "the period of doubling on the first supposition would be 250 years, and—on the last would be twelve years and four-fifths." This question certainly did not require the extraordinary abilities of Euler to solve. If the sum were worked upon the Rule of Compound Interest, to be found in any of the common books of arithmetic, the answer would be exactly the same as it is in Euler's Table.
Surely the reading part of the public have seldom been so egregiously trifled with, as when Mr. Malthus gravely placed this calculation of Euler among his authorities for the rapid multiplication of mankind.
The question which the real politician is called upon to examine, is not what would be the result upon certain arbitrary suppositions, but what does actually happen in the community of mankind.
Mr. Malthus indeed adds, "This proportion [viz. the proportion on which Euler calculates a doubling in twelve years and four-fifths^] has actually occurred for short periods in more countries than one."
This the Essay on Population asserts in its usual Laconic style.
Surely it is not thus, that the gravest question (if at all grave) which was ever presented to the consideration of mankind, ought to be treated. Let it be remembered, that the corollary from this and the like propositions, is that vise and misery, and nothing but vise and misery, are the indispensable guarantees for the existence of our race.
I cannot for myself consent to admit such a proposition with such a corollary, without the minutest and the strictest examination. One line, or even six pages, will never satisfy me in a question of this sort. If Mr. Malthus had named his countries and his periods, it would then have been open for me to ascertain what peculiar circumstances might have occasioned this doubling for the confessedly " short periods" our author speaks of.
But what have we to do with "short periods?" The speculations of the Essay on Population, with which the world has been made drunk for twenty years, treat of nothing less than infinity. The main proposition of the author is that "population, if unchecked, will go on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increase in a geometrical ratio: "that is, will go on for ever: when it has once begun, nothing can stop it totally but the consummation of all things, or partially but some of those checks which fall under the heads either of vise or misery. Indeed Mr. Malthus has recently told us, that, "if any person will take the trouble to make the calculation," he may easily ascertain how long a time, upon his principles, will be necessary, to people the whole visible universe with human beings at the rate of four men to every square yard. What have "short periods" of increase to do with this?
It will more fully appear as we proceed that short periods of increase afford no foundation whatever upon which to found our conclusion as to any ratio of increase in perpetual series.
But it is worth while to dwell a little upon this doubling in infinite series, which is the corner-stone of Mr. Malthus's system. The rules for calculating such a series are to be found in every common book of arithmetic: but hitherto it has been regarded bv almost all sober men, as an exercise in calculation, a mathematical recreation, and nothing more.
Mr. Bonnycastle, as above quoted, has ascertained the price of a horse, if he were purchased by the rule of a geometrical progression, of which the exponent is 2, and if the progression, beginning at a farthing, were carried on through thirty-two steps. Dr. Price has calculated the produce of one penny put out at our Savior's birth to five per cent. compound interest, and finds that in the year 1791 it would have increased to a greater sum than would be contained in three hundred millions of earths, all solid gold. But did any one ever think of applying this to the affairs of real existence? Has any one ever given four millions sterling for a horse? Did any one ever, by dint of compound interest, for himself and his successors, turn a penny into three hundred millions of earths, all solid gold? Is it worth our while, except as a puzzle to sharpen the wits of school-boys, to talk either of the one or the other? As little, be sure, are Mr. Malthus's ratios worthy to be thought of by statesmen, or acted upon even by the overseers of parish-workhouses, to which, according to our author, they eminently belong.
There is such a thing, well known among logicians, as an argument, that proves too much, and by so doing is universally set down as proving nothing. If ever there was such an argument, such is Mr. Malthus's argument from "the American increase;" or, in other words, such is "the American increase" as expounded by Mr. Malthus. A sound and well regulated mind, that is engaged in other matters than mathematical puzzles and wonders, soon comes to a stand amid the luxuriances of an infinite series.
In this respect we may perhaps consider ourselves as substantially indebted to Mr. Malthus for the illustration, introduced into his last work, of peopling the whole visible universe at the rate of four men to every square yard. There is no bubble so brilliant, that, if you attempt to blow it up to too vast a size, will not presently burst, and shew to every bystander that it was but a bubble all the while.
There is, says Mr. Malthus, a tendency in the human species, susceptible of the effect of in no long time peopling all the stars. And yet, according to his own shewing, this tendency has never displayed itself, but in one insignificant period of one hundred and fifty years, in one remote corner of the world, and with what circumstances of evidence we shall presently have occasion to inquire. Credat Judceus Apella.
If the principle of population had gone on unchecked for eighteen hundred years, it would have produced men enough to fill the whole visible universe with human creatures as thick as they could stand: this is in so many words the doctrine of our author. The earth is at this moment computed to contain 600,000,000 of human beings. I wish Mr. Malthus has put down his numbers, that, by subtracting the one from the other, we might see by a glance of the eye, how many had been crushed in the egg, or destroyed in infancy. But I have shewn in the proper place, that, upon the reasonings of the Essay on Population, they were not crushed in the egg, but were actually born, and actually died in childhood.
Let us however treat the doctrine of our author fairly. God forbid that we should crush the "principle of population" under the weight of numbers that do not belong to it! It is true that, upon our author's principles, all in every generation are born that can be born. But, for as many as die in their infancy, we cannot count upon their progeny. This progeny is only crushed in the egg. Granted: yet I must be allowed to set on the other side the age of the world. It would need only eighteen hundred years to people the whole visible universe at the rate of four men to every square yard: but the world has lasted according to the most moderate statements six thousand years; according to the Indians and Chinese many hundred times as long. Oh, for a sober philosopher to count up the innumerable infinities (how shall I express the idea!) of children that have died for the benefit of the geometrical ratio—beside all that mortality, which the records of countries or the sad ruminations of the moralist, had recognized, and thought they had completed the tale, little suspecting the discovery which has since been made of Mr. Malthus's ratios! Millions become as insignificant as units, when applied to this consideration. Dr. Price's three hundred millions of earths all solid gold, are nothing. Three hundred millions of earths all solid men, would not constitute the millionth part of that company which"is set before us, when Mr. Malthus draws up the curtain, and shews us the geometrical ratio.—I must again repeat, How do we know this? Upon what evidence is it to be received? Upon one solitary experiment (and I must be allowed to add, a most equivocal one) of one bare hundred and fifty years, in one infant colony, as I may call it, in an obscure nook of "the New World; and this replied to and refuted, with one Voice, and with an evidence the most consenting and astounding, by all ages and countries, by all sects of religion and forms of government, that were ever heard of or devised.
If America had never been discovered, the geometrical ratio, as applied to the multiplication of mankind, would never have been known. If the British colonies had never been planted, Mr. Malthus would never have written. The human species might have perished of a long old age, a fate to which perhaps all sublunary things are subject at last, without one statesman or one legislator through myriads of centuries, having suspected this dangerous tendency to increase, "in comparison with which human institutions, however they may appear to be causes of much mischief to society, are mere feathers." There have been new lights in religion; and there are new lights in politics: a spark struck out fortuitously, but carefully, gathered up and preserved by men anxiously solicitous for the public weal. "The light shineth in darkness."
But it may be said, though Mr. Malthus should be wrong in his calculations, and the power of increase in the numbers of the human species should not be altogether so prodigious as is above stated, it may nevertheless be sufficiently great to authorize all the practical inferences and precautions insisted on in the Essay on Population.
When once I have brought the reader to this point, I consider myself as having gained my cause
The law of arithmetical and geometrical progression is one of the clearest things in the whole compass of human knowledge. It is altogether as certain, considered as matter of abstract science, as it is absurd and inapplicable, when we attempt to connect it with real life and the ebbs and flows of sublunary things. It admits no half-measures. It is like the vis inertice, which sir Isaac Newton has set down as a principal law of the phenomena of matter. Once set in motion, it moves for ever, and for ever with the same force.
Mr. Malthus's discovery is built on "the American increase." He "considers it as proved, as soon as related." "The population has been found to double itself, for above a century and a half successively, in twenty-five years, and that by procreation only." "The American increase" proves the geometrical ratio of increase, or it proves nothing. The whole fabric of Mr. Malthus's theory rests upon this simple proposition; and it is the exceeding simplicity, and apparent cogency of its principle, to which it has been mainly indebted for its universal reception. If the numbers of mankind have not been found so to double in periods short, defined, and equal in duration, and to go on doubling, the Essay on Population is turned into waste paper.
This idle and extravagant hypothesis therefore being removed, the whole science stands just as it did before Mr. Malthus wrote; and we are brought precisely to the position most fevourable to the speculations of the following pages. The Essay on Population has done nothing, and worse than nothing. The geometrical ratio, as applied to any known state of mankind is a dream. "The American increase," as explained by our author is a blunder. Let us then proceed to scrutinize the subject of population, as a theory in which no advances have been made for a century past, and.endeavor to draw sound inferences concerning it from authentic and incontrovertible documents.
Such then is the system that has gained a success in the world wholly unprecedented. A superstitious man might think it was prophesied of in ithe following passage of the Revelation of St. John. "And I stood upon the sands of the sea; and I saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns. [Were there not seventeen states in the confederacy from which Mr. Malthus draws his example?] And they worshiped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth, speaking great things and blasphemies: and power was given unto him, to continue forty and two months. And all the world wondered after the beast." And again: "In the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving ear to seducing spirits, forbidding to marry."
The additional authority in behalf of the geometrical ratio, which has occurred to Mr. Malthus " since publishing his quarto edition," viz. "the three regular censuses, printed in Pitkin's Statistical View," will be fully considered by me in the Fourth Book.
• Book 2, Chapter 03 : Principles Respecting the Increase or Decrease of the Numbers of Mankind
HAVING thus entered into an impartial review of Mr. Malthus's theory and the authorities upon which it is founded, I proceed to that which is most properly the object of my volume. The Essay on Population has left for me a clear stage in this respect: it has touched upon none of those topics from which a real knowledge of the subject is to be acquired. Its author from a very slight and unsatisfactory evidence has drawn the most absurd and extravagant consequences; and having done this, he closes the account, fully convinced that he has shewn in "the laws of nature and the passions of mankind" an evil, for which all remedies are feeble, and before which all courage must sink into despair.
My business is therefore with those topics which Mr. Malthus has named, and only named: "the laws of nature, and the passions of mankind." I will beg leave to consider something
[Page 145]
of these, and particularly of the former, before I proceed to the millions to be found in a table of censorate; and, when I come to those tables, I will not look at them solely en masse, but will endeavor to analyze their contents.
The inquisitive and scientific part of the human species are not wholly ignorant of the natural history of man. We know, in the first place, from experience, how long this fabric of the human frame is in the majority of cases capable to endure. "The days of our years are threescore years and ten." We know, in the next place, from the same source of experience, how many years in ordinary cases precede the period of our maturity, for how long a time we retain our full vigor and manhood, and how many years belong to the period of decrepitude and decline.
There is another particular relative to our species, which does not deserve the name of science, but which is of the most vital importance to the subject under consideration; and that is, the distinction of mankind into two sexes, male and female.
In the disquisition in which we are engaged, relative to the procreation and multiplication of our species, it is essential that we should recollect, that the female only is concerned in the business of bringing children into the world. This is the law of our nature; the germ of the human species can be matured by the female, and by her only. Women, if I may be allowed
[Page 146]
so to illustrate my principle, are the soil from which human creatures are produced. The rest of the society, men, young and old, and children of the male sex, [exclusive of such a number of males, as might be found necessary to give activity to the prolific power in the females] are absolutely of no account in relation to the point we are here considering.
Another distinction it is also incumbent upon us to recollect. We just now divided the life of man into three periods, immaturity, perfect manhood, and decline. This distinction is still more conspicuously applicable to the female sex. The line which divides the three periods in the life of the male, so far as the propagation of the species is concerned, is very uncertain. Not so in the female. It is, I conceive, well settled as a general rule, that the age of childbearing is over by the time the female has completed the forty-fifth year of her age. A line is also capable of being ascertained, if not for all females universally, at least variously for the different climates and races of mankind, fixing the age at which the power of child-bearing is found to commence. I believe I may add, that the distance between these two periods may be ascertained to be nearly the same in all cases, the female who in certain climates arrives at an earlier maturity, being seen to grow old, and to cease from the power of child-bearing, sooner than in the milder and more temperate climates which we inhabit.
[Page 147]
It happens in many subjects, the understanding of which is of the greatest importance to the welfare of mankind, that the elements of our knowledge respecting them are so simple, as to be overlooked by the thoughtless, and contemned by the superficial. Just so it is in the question we are here considering.
The principle which has now been delivered will probably be found to be of the highest importance in leading us safely through the mazes of the question of population. If, in the inquiry respecting the increase of the numbers of mankind from one generation to another, like females of an age capable of child-bearing me alone to be considered, it follows, that a census or enumeration of human beings in any given country, or over the whole globe, can never constitute any term in the progression. Such an enumeration will consist of men, women and children, of every different age, from the infant in the cradle, to the male or female who from old age is tottering on the brink of the grave, and therefore can afford no solid ground from which to conclude as to the number of human beings that shall be found in that country, or on this globe, after the lapse of twenty-five, fifty, or one hundred years. At all events it must be a very long series of observations, and these of a sort in which the difference of numbers can be in no wise imputed to the inaccuracy of early enumerations, and the superior exactness of those which follow, that can supply
[Page 148]
materials for any safe inference in this way. They must also relate to a country, not distinguished at least for any remarkable influx of emigrants from other parts of the world.
The males in the community we are considering (with the single limitation which has been above named), the old women, and the female children who are doomed never to arrive at the age of maturity, are the mere drones of the hive, so far as the inquiry respecting the progressive increase of the numbers of mankind is concerned. They may be useful; they may be ornamental; they may be entitled to all our respect and all our tenderness; they may be the boast of the whole earth for intellect or for virtue. But, for just so long a time as we would reason upon the abstract power and possibility of population, we must, though under a very different impression, and for the purpose of arriving at a very different conclusion, be as rigorous in excluding from our thoughts all that is most lovely and most honorable in human nature, as Mr. Malthus is when he supposes, that men in a perfectly virtuous and happy state of society, would ruin that state in the shortest practicable period, by an unreflecting conformity to the impulses of a brutal appetite.
The principle which is here laid down will be made in some respects more intelligible, if we illustrate it by a supposition, which has the further advantage of being peculiarly applicable to
[Page 149]
Mr. Malthus's conception as to the United States of America.
Let us suppose a colony of one thousand persons to be transported into a country hitherto void of inhabitants. Let us suppose this colony to consist of five hundred men and five hundred women, and that further every one of them shall be between the ages of twenty-five and thirty years. Here we get rid at once of all those useless or doubtful members of the community, so far as procreation is concerned, that fill up the extreme ranks of society in all settled countries, the ranks of childhood and of advanced life. Here are five hundred females, who, except so far as an allowance is to be made for cases of barrenness, are all of them qualified to add to the numbers of the next generation.
Let us now take the period assigned by Sir William Petty, who states that "it is possible to double the number of the members of a community in the short period of ten years." In the colony I have described I can easily suppose this, and will even grant him, if required, a still larger amount. Well then: here will we fix our foot, and take this as the basis of a geometrical ratio. In ten years this colony, which at first consisted of one thousand souls, has become two thousand. Therefore upon the principle here assigned, w\ twenty years it will become four thousand.
But what is the actual state of the case? The colony at first consisted of one thousand persons:
[Page 150]
it now amounts to two thousand. But every individual of the last thousand, and much more (for many more than a thousand children must have been born. and have lived to a certain age, to compensate for the inevitable mortality of the seniors), is under ten years of age. The number of persons capable of bringing children into the world, has not experienced the smallest increase. Perhaps none of the original stock, from which an increase of the numbers of the community was to be expected, have yet arrived at that stage, when the spring of the constitution is so far exhausted that they can no longer be relied; on, as belonging to the class of those who shall give-children to the colony. If however we had taken the period a little longer, such would infallibly have been the case. And at all events we may be perfectly sure, that the number of persons capable of becoming mothers, must in the coarse of ten years have been greatly diminished by death.
I will not at present pursue this illustration further: we shall have abundant occasion to resume the subject as we proceed. Enough has here been alleged, to afford a strong confirmation of the maxim of Voltaire, which I took as the motto of an early Chapter: "Les hommes ne multiplient pas aussi aisement qu'on le pense." "The multiplication of the numbers of mankind is not quite so easy an affair as some have imagined."
• Book 2, Chapter 04 : Accounts which are given of the Population of Sweden
HAVING thus delivered what may perhaps be found to be the fundamental principle of our subject, we may profitably proceed to the examination of such documents, as the assiduity of political governors, or the industry of authors who have for whatever reason concerned themselves with the numbers of mankind, has collected on the subject of the populousness of nations.
It will be clear from what has been said, that tables of population for any very limited period, which do not distinguish the sexes and the different ages of the inhabitants of a country, are absolutely of no use in determining the question of the power, generally, or in any particular case, of progressive increase in the numbers of mankind, The two enumerations therefore, which were made of the people of Great Britain in 1801 and 1811, are merely so much labor thrown away.
Having taken some pains to look through all that is known of the population of countries, I can find nothing that affords a chance of reasonable satisfaction, except the accounts which have been published of the population of Sweden. To them therefore for the present I shall particularly direct my attention.
Sweden is a regio pene toto divisa orbe. It receives few emigrants, and sends forth few colonies. In the period to which the accounts relate that I am about to produce, this kingdom has enjoyed a great portion of internal tranquility; and, as will more fully appear in the sequel, has possessed almost every imaginable advantage for the increase of its inhabitants by direct procreation.
Of the people of Sweden I find an account to have been taken, from three years to three years, in the enlightened manner above suggested, that is, under separate heads as to sex and age, from the year 1751, to, 1 believe, the year 1775. From that period it has been continued to the present time, with an interval of five years between each enumeration.
The collectors of the Swedish enumerations have further presented us with Tables of the annual births, marriages and deaths; and have even, in two instances, proceeded to compare the population as it is, with the population as it ought to be: thus,
For the year 1780.
Ought to be ---------------- 2,780,334,
Is-------------------------------2,782,168
And again for 1795.
Ought to be ------------------3,078,308
Is -------------------------------3,043,731a.
Now the upper line in each of these examples, I conceive, can mean nothing else, than that, if we add the report of the intermediate births to the preceding enumeration, and subtract the intermediate deaths, the result ought to be as here stated. If this be the case, it is certainly worthy of remark, how near the computatory and the actual enumerations come to each other, and consequently how high a degree of credit is due -to the Swedish Tables.
A judicious abstract of the information then existing on the subject, was published in the Swedish language, in the Memoirs of the Royal Aeademy of Sciences at Stockholm for the Year 1766, by Mr. Peter Wargentin, secretary to that institution. A continuation of Mr. Wargentin's paper has appeared, but somewhat irregularly, in the subsequent volumes of the same collection. I will set out with exhibiting an ample specimen of these Tables of population.b
TABLE I.
Containing an Abstract of the Bills of Mortality
For the Years 1755, 1756, and 1757 and a
Summary of the Enumeration for 1757
|
Annual Deaths, being an Average of Deaths during the Years 1755, 1756, 1757 |
Number of Living in 1757 |
||||
|
Males |
Fem |
Males |
Females |
||
|
Still-born Died under 1 year Between 1-5 3-5 5-10 10-15 15-20 20-25 25-30 30-35 35-40 40-45 45-50 50-55 55-60 60-65 65-70 70-75 75-80 80-85 85-90 Upwards of 90 |
1301 10542 3884 1922 1639 739 635 826 845 909 819 1012 899 1090 1102 1214 1222 1390 1056 733 412 240 |
950 9348 4027 1800 1566 716 607 716 836 1014 757 969 774 941 1100 1481 1693 2009 1593 1244 673 407 |
Born Under 1 year Between 1-5 3-5 5-10 10-15 15-20 20-25 25-30 30-35 35-40 40-45 45-50 50-55 55-60 60-65 65-70 70-75 75-80 80-85 85-90 Upwards of 90 |
44795 33731 63954 64380 123984 114606 95354 91460 86947 82716 68516 58990 50658 43500 39091 28557 22293 16390 9236 4060 1690 583 |
42999 33459 64883 65045 125175 114203 100087 104873 99781 90880 75563 65443 58162 51973 48599 39580 33559 24913 14679 6786 2932 1026 |
|
33130 |
34269 |
Males Females |
1121595 1221600 |
1221600 |
|
|
Total |
2323195 |
Table II.
|
Average Deaths during the Years 1758, 1759, 1760 |
Number of Living in 1760 |
||||
|
Males |
Fem |
Males |
Females |
||
|
Still-born Died under 1 year Between 1-5 3-5 5-10 10-15 15-20 20-25 25-30 30-35 35-40 40-45 45-50 50-55 55-60 60-65 65-70 70-75 75-80 80-85 85-90 Upwards of 90 |
1183 9239 3020 1549 1605 736 678 862 932 1020 957 1150 1160 1251 1378 1401 1306 1432 1187 846 410 223 |
309 7789 2861 1482 1435 691 639 772 957 1151 918 1184 990 1167 1307 1749 760 2275 1825 1341 669 392 |
Born Under 1 year Between 1-5 3-5 5-10 10-15 15-20 20-25 25-30 30-35 35-40 40-45 45-50 50-55 55-60 60-65 65-70 70-75 75-80 80-85 85-90 Upwards of 90 |
44174 37323 66034 65828 128627 121525 97621 88752 85001 81433 70773 61158 51407 43897 37224 82329 21438 15102 9096 418 1513 555 |
42381 37272 66860 66923 129332 119514 101633 103613 100614 92154 79066 68645 59889 51872 46402 42647 30169 25299 14265 7387 2571 1019 |
|
32357 |
33354 |
Males Females |
1121053 1246545 |
1246545 |
|
|
Total |
2367598 |
TABLE III
|
Average Deaths during the Years 1761, 1762, 1763 |
Number of Living in 1763 |
|
Males |
Fem |
Males |
Females |
||
|
Still-born Died under 1 year Between 1-5 3-5 5-10 10-15 15-20 20-25 25-30 30-35 35-40 40-45 45-50 50-55 55-60 60-65 65-70 70-75 75-80 80-85 85-90 Upwards of 90 |
1324 11172 4393 2206 2151 933 711 834 883 1020 955 1180 1099 1280 1177 1586 1237 1322 1092 917 414 215 |
988 9850 4336 2249 2057 834 658 756 863 1146 923 1170 938 1113 1097 1721 1566 2041 1695 1446 650 379 |
Born Under 1 year Between 1-5 3-5 5-10 10-15 15-20 20-25 25-30 30-35 35-40 40-45 45-50 50-55 55-60 60-65 65-70 70-75 75-80 80-85 85-90 Upwards of 90 |
45892 36094 66059 66454 130019 126696 108312 92299 88056 85936 74826 67448 52398 47298 37086 34892 20649 15454 8858 4620 1508 527 |
43904 35453 67234 67711 130758 128021 109985 105115 101003 95811 81453 74854 59551 56646 45537 44925 28964 23159 13556 7487 2694 988 |
|
36777 |
37488 |
Males Females |
1165489 1280905 |
1280905 |
|
|
Total |
2446394 |
TABLE IV
Account of the Births, Marriages, and Deaths in the Kingdom of Sweden for Fifteen Years.
|
Years |
Births |
Marriages |
Deaths |
|
1749 1750 1751 1752 1753 1754 1755 1756 1757 1758 1759 1760 1761 1762 1763 |
76766 82360 89341 84110 84406 90021 91767 89739 81878 83299 85579 90635 90075 89162 90152 |
19045 20927 21335 20922 20089 21994 21472 20007 18799 19484 23210 23383 22421 21467 20927 |
617483 58939 57663 60456 54977 64715 64982 69161 68034 74370 62662 60083 63183 74520 85093 |
TABLE V
Enumerations of the People of Sweden for 1800 and 1805
|
1800 |
1805 |
|||
|
Males |
Fem |
Males |
Fem |
|
|
Under 1 Year Between 1 &3 3-5 5-10 10-15 15-20 20-25 25-30 30-35 35-40 40-45 45-50 50-55 55-60 60-65 65-70 70-75 75-80 80-85 85-90 to 95 100 101,2,3 104 06 08 |
41,515 83,903 86,536 167,795 154,453 137,972 130,552 113,470 109,649 100,052 93,442 81,703 68,856 52,221 41,881 31,961 20,768 10,667 4,087 1,151 213 |
40,424 84,253 87,352 168,316 153,392 142,292 141,914 125,059 120,134 110,302 101,597 91,244 77,980 61,066 51,480 41,125 27,787 15,009 6,249 1,884 424 |
47,688 87,373 83,387 174,332 169,054 143,232 134,518 127,503 108,152 100,714 95,743 82,968 75,046 56,953 43,888 29,965 21,167 11,372 4,827 1,280 273 45 5 1 |
47,413 88,982 84,672 174,736 168,529 147,582 144,432 135,583 118,076 112,212 106,057 92,779 84,680 67,302 52,499 39,785 29,494 16,345 7,396 2,095 437 66 6 2 1 1 |
|
1,532,849 |
1,649,283 |
1,599,487 |
1,721,160 |
|
|
3,182,132 |
3,320,647 |
TABLE VI
Population of the Diocese of Upsal.
|
Number of the Living |
Unmarried above 15 |
Under 15 |
|||||||||
|
Year |
Males |
Fem |
Total |
Subsisting Marriages |
Widowers |
Widows |
Males |
Fem |
Males |
Fem |
Households |
|
1749 1752 1755 1760 1763 1766 1769 1772 1773 |
90503 93441 97355 95966 99933 102949 104824 105564 109989 |
105926 108752 110949 113384 114112 117057 118671 119081 116725 |
196429 202193 208304 209350 214045 220006 223495 224645 220714 |
36279 37474 38872 38851 40492 41273 42055 41652 40682 |
2083 1750 2055 2148 2228 2328 2158 2671 3151 |
11848 11774 11537 12621 11874 12267 12202 12381 12039 |
21059 21381 22232 21726 21826 23438 24564 25455 25826 |
25818 27432 27209 27325 26921 27827 28139 28989 29330 |
31650 32364 33652 33629 25063 35902 36079 35792 34357 |
31412 32544 33874 43199 35154 35688 36242 36053 34654 |
29494 28014 29007 29262 30568 33417 33688 33580 32944 |
TABLE VII.
A General View of the Increase of the Population of Sweden
|
Years |
Population |
Interval |
Increase |
Proportion |
|
1751 1757 1760 1763 1775 1780 1795 1800 1805 or without Finland 1805 1810 1815 |
2,229,611 2,323,195 2,367,598 2,446,394 2,630,992 2,782,168 3,013,731 3,182,132 3,320,647 2,424,874 2,377,851 2,465,066 |
6 years 3 years 3 years 12 years 5 years 15 years 5 years 5 years 5 years 5 years |
93,534 44,403 78,796 184,598 151,176 261,563 138,401 138,515 Diminution 87,215 |
1/24 1/32 1/30 1/13 1/10 1/10 1/22 1/23 1/27 |
Total Increase in 54 years, from 1751 to 1805,
1,091,016, or ½ nearly.
The first remark that suggests itself on these tables is, that they constitute the only documents which prove from actual observation, and in the compass of ordinary history, that there is a power of numerical increase in the human species. Exclusively of this evidence, all is conjecture merely; and one man has as much right to believe, with Montesquieu, that the race of mankind is by a fatal necessity rapidly verging towards extinction, as another to embrace the wild and chimerical opinions of Mr. Mai thus, and the far-famed doctrine of the geometrical ratio.
In Sweden there has been for a certain period a progressive increase of population; and we have great reason to believe that this increase is chiefly or solely the effect of the principle of procreation. To judge from what has appeared in fifty-four years, from 1751 to 1805, we should say that the human species, in some situations, and under some circumstances, might double itself in somewhat more than one hundred years.
This is all that is known on the subject, which is in the smallest degree calculated to afford a foundation for Mr. Malthus's theories. For it will fully appear, when we come to treat of the United States of North America, that they do not yield him the slightest support.
This is all that is known in any degree favor, able to Mr. Malthus's theories. What then is there that is known on the other side?
Every thing which has been brought together in the former book. We have not the smallest reason to believe, that the population of the earth has increased, or that the human race is in any way more numerous now, than it was three thousand years ago. This is a fact worthy of the most serious consideration:
Mr. Malthus dismisses this question in the slightest manner, and in his usual summary and dictatorial way pronounces that it is vise and misery that keep down the numbers of mankind. As his theory is delivered in three lines, "Population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio:" so his answer to every objection lies also in three lines, "The positive checks to population are various, and include every cause whether arising from vise or misery, which in any degree contributes to shorten the natural duration of human life."c
It is not thus that the subject will be treated in after-ages, and when philosophy shall have extended its empire over this topic as over others. Mr. Malthus has taken his contemporaries by surprise, and, partly by the dazzling simplicity of his hypothesis, and partly by its tendency, supporting as it does, and furnishing the apology of, almost all human vises, and particularly those of the rich and great, has gained a countless number of adherents.
But what he has here delivered has not even the semblance of science. And patient men, I will venture to predict, will hereafter arise, who will look narrowly into the subject, and will endeavor from clear and intelligible principles, not by one sweeping and unlimited clause, to account for the facts brought together in my first book.
The question then will be, to consider, What is the reason that the multiplication of mankind, such as we find it for fifty-four years in Sweden, has never prevailed for any very extensive period of time, in any country of the world.d This question necessarily involves with it another, and infinitely important question, Whether it is in any way the duty of political governments, or of those who possess power over their fellow-men, to meditate or provide any purposed or intentional checks against the increase of the human race?
My concern in the present Book is with the question, after what rate it is possible, judging from facts and actual experience, for the race of mankind, under the most favorable circumstances, to increase. It will be the object of the Third Book, to put together such hints as I have been able to collect, and such reflections as have occurred to me, that may be calculated to afford a methodical and satisfactory solution of the fact generally as to the non-increase of the human race. At least I shall hope, as I said in a former instance,e that "some foundation will be laid by me, and the principle will begin to be understood." I am anxious to "set before other enquirers evidence that they may scan, and arguments which, if convincing, they may expand, and if otherwise, which they may refute." I am anxious to furnish the materials of a solution, if not a solution in all its forms, of the phenomenon of the non-increase of the human race so far as the records of authentic profane history extend.
The population of Sweden in 1805, as appears from the actual enumeration, amounted to 3,320,647
Now let us take half this number the population of 1705: 1,660,323
By the same rule the population will be in 1605: 830,162
in 1505: 415,081
in 1405: 207,840
in 1305: 103,770
in 1205: 51,885
in 1105: 25,942
in 1005: 12,971
in" 905: 6,485
in 805: 3,242
in 705: 1,621
in 605: 810
in 505: 405
"So that by this way of calculation Sweden contained, at the time of the destruction of the Western Empire in 476, little more than three hundred souls, and when this part of the globe began to send forth its hordes, which destroyed the power of the Romans, and charged the face of the world, it could scarcely boast a human inhabitant.
a Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Stockholm, for the Year 1799
b Of the Tables I have here inserted, the first four are to be found in the volume of the Swedish Memoirs for 1766, the fifth in the volume for 1809, and the 6th in the volume for 1776. The seventh is a Table of my own construction, founded generally on the enumerations I met with dispersed in different volumes of this work.
c Essay on Population, Vol. I. p. 21.
d "It may be worth while to illustrate this proposition in figures, thus:
e Page 3.
• Book 2, Chapter 05 : Inferences Suggested by the Accounts of Sweden
[175]
[pp.165-174 missing]
be to fill the situation of domestic servants, will perhaps be found very generally to marry, though a little later than they might otherwise have done. The females above the lower class, who, for want of the advantage of a portion, waste their years "in single blessedness," are enough in number to have the power of making their complaints heard, but are extremely few, when compared with the total amount of females in a state or nation.
[176]
• Book 2, Chapter 06 : Observations on the Swedish Tables Continued
BUT there is another view of the subject, equally worthy of notice, and well calculated to throw light upon the topic before us.
I have just stated that the annual number of marriages in any country, cannot, for any length of time, exceed the number of females annually arriving at a marriageable age.
Now let us take this question in another way. Thought I have set out with considering the women capable of child-bearing as the soil or nidus in which the successive generations of mankind are reared, yet it is equally true, that husbands are necessary to the consummation of marriage, as that wives are so, and, at least in countries where polygamy is forbidden, that there can be no more marriages than husbands.
The same inference therefore should seem to follow as to males, which I have already drawn as to females, viz., that the annual number of marriages in any country, cannot, for any length of time, exceed the number of males arriving at the age which it is permitted, or rather at which it is usual for them to marry
[177]
But the number of males, though they are born in greater numbers, will be found at almost any age above childhood in all Tables of Population, and specially in those of Sweden, to fall short of the number of females.
In Sweden, the country we are here considering, there is a law, forbidding any individual of the male sex to marry, till he has completed the twenty-first year of his age. a
To this consideration it may be added, that it will scarcely happen, that every male will be disposed to marry, as soon as he has completed the twenty-first year of his age. Perhaps, reasoning on this principle, the marriages which annually take place in Sweden cannot, for any length of time, be expected to exceed the number of males who annually arrive at twenty-five years of age. This will reduce the number of marriages, and consequently increase the number of females who spend their lives in the single state.
Such would appear at first sigh to be the speculative principle of the subject, and would contradict what has been established respecting it in the former chapter. But let us see how it stands, as practically exhibited to us in the Swedish Tables. And here as in the case of the fe-
[178]
males, I will take the fifth par of the males between twenty and twenty-five in the year under consideration, as the number arriving in that year at twenty or twenty-five years of age. The number arriving at twenty-five will indeed be less than the number arriving at twenty, in proportion to the males who are found to die annually between those periods of life. But this is not the season of human existence most considerably exposed to the accidents of mortality; and I will wave for the present the taking that diminution into the estimates.
The three years then, 1757, 1760, 1763, as appears from the Tables, will stand as follows:
| Males arriving at the marriageable age |
Females becoming marriageable |
Marriages | |
| 1757 | 18,292 | 20,974 | 18,799 |
| 1760 | 17,750 | 20,723 | 23,383 |
| 1765 | 18,460 | 21,023 | 20,927 |
| ------ | ------ | ------ | |
| Total | 54,502 | 62,720 | 63,109 |
It has already been observed, that the females becoming marriageable do in the most years exceed, as we should expect them to do, the annual number of marriages. For certainly, the marriages of any one year do not form a standard: the marriages of any one year may exceed: my proposition is, that the annual number of marriages cannot, for any length of time, exceed the number of females annually arriving at the marriageable age.
[179]
Add to which, I have taken the marriageable age at twenty; but it is possible to marry before that age; and the Swedish law permits females to marry at fifteen. b Now the number of females annually arriving at fifteen is greater than the number of females annually arriving at twenty. If therefore the number of marriages exceeded the number of females annually arriving at twenty, the excess must necessarily be supplied form the females between fifteen and twenty.
But the case of the males is different; and they, as I have said, are forbidden to marry till they have completed the twenty-first year of their age. How then are we to account for the excess of marriages above the number of males annually arriving at twenty-one?
This difficulty will be found to be in a considerable degree removed by an inspection of the Upsal Table. c Few things are more striking in this Table than the excess of the number of widows above that of widowers. Adding together the whole series of nine years there exhibited, the number is
of widowers 20,567
of widows 108,537:
the number of widows being more than five times the number of widowers. But married women, as may be judged from the Tables of Sweden in general, die with nearly as much
[180]
rapidity as married men. The small number of widowers can therefore only be accounted for, by the infallible inference, that five times as great a number of widowers as of widows, are found to marry again. And form the same principle we are entitled to conclude, that they intermarry generally, not with widows, but with virgins, or what our law calls spinsters.
To apply this, let us observe that, if the diocese of Upsal in 1793 contained 11,874 widows, and the whole of Sweden by the rule of proportion would appear to have contained 135,712. But if we suppose as many men to have lost their wives as women to have lost their husbands, it would then follow that upwards of 108,000 men had married a second time, even without taking into account those who might a second time have become widowers. This affords an ample allowance for the deficiency there might otherwise appear in the number of marriageable males.
Having referred in this place to the Table of Population for the Diocese of Upsal, I will here comment upon one or two particulars in it, which seem to require explanation. This Table descends to a greater fullness of distinction and enumeration than any other that has fallen under my observation; and it is therefore particularly desirable that it should be well understood.
One circumstance which appeared to me at the first view somewhat surprising, was the small number of households in the last column, compared with that of the subsisting marriages in the fifth. This indeed is in no way material to the question I am investigating; but it is right for the satisfaction of the reader that it should be cleared up.
I stated this difficulty to the intelligent Swede,d who had the goodness to assist me in translating the heads of these Tables; and his explanation was as follows. "By a household or establishment we understand all those persons who eat at one table, or, more properly who are subsisted from one income or expenditure. For example, at Sir Joseph Banks's there are various tables at which different persons are fed, but the whole expense is defrayed by one individual. This therefore is one household. If, on the contrary, there are several families dwelling under one roof, but which are, so to express myself, not nourished from one common root, these would be counted in the Swedish enumeration as separate households. Now in this country ['Sweden'], nothing is more common, particularly in the rural parts, than for the sons, after they are married, to live under the roof with their father, all together constituting one ample household. This is the reason why, in the Table of Population for the Diocese of Upsal, there appears so much smaller a number of households than of subsisting marriages."
Another circumstance which may need elucidation is, that the number of unmarried males and females above fifteen years of age, in the eighth and ninth columns, may appear at first sight greater, than from previous reasonings might have been expected.
Upon this I would remark, first, that it is not rational to suppose that there can be any substantial discordance between the Tables of Population for Sweden generally, and the Tables of Population for one of its most considerable provinces. The comparisons I have exhibited between the number of annual marriages and the number of females annually arriving at twenty, are expressly taken out of the Tables of Population for the kingdom of Sweden.
Secondly, every reader will perceive that there is a vast difference between the setting down in figures on the one hand, the number of females arriving at twenty in any given year who shall finally remain unmarried, and on the other the setting down the number of females at all ages, who at any given period shall be found unmarried, though then may happen to marry in the next year or the next week. The number in the last case may be great, at the same time that number in the former may be exceedingly small.
Thirdly, the unmarried in the Uspal Table include all who have passed their fifteenth birthday at which age according to the Swedish law females are permitted to marry. But in the extracts I have made from the Tables of Sweden in general, I have taken the marriageable age at twenty. Therefore the Uspal Table swells the number of the unmarried females by the whole amount of those between fifteen and twenty, or at least by the amount of such as shall not have married between those periods. But the females between fifteen and twenty will be found to constitute nearly a twelfth part of the entire female population.
The proposition which I deduced from the Tables of Sweden in general, is that the annual marriages nearly equal in number the females annually arriving at twenty; or, in other words, that there are nearly as many women married every year, as there are women arriving every year at that age. The only limit upon that proposition would be in the number of women who shall end their lives in the unmarried state.
But the column of unmarried females in the Uspal Table, does not set before us the number of females that shall live and die unmarried. In the first place, it may well be supposed that the greater part of the females between fifteen and twenty, making a twelfth part of the entire female population, will hereafter marry. In the second place it is to be considered, that the total amount of unmarried females in any kingdom or province at a given period, will materially depend upon the customary age of marriage. If every female throughout the state married the day she completed her fifteenth year, then it is self-evident that the column of unmarried females above fifteen would be left a complete blank. But, if on the other hand the marrying age were from fifteen to thirty-five, then all might marry, and yet half the females between fifteen and thirty-five would constantly appear in the column of the unmarried.
Another consideration is to be added, which I may thus illustrate. Let us suppose the females annually arriving at twenty to be 20,000, an that of these 19,000 marry, and 100 continue in the single state. Let us suppose that there is some natural reason, of infirmity or otherwise, why this twentieth part of the female division of the community should not marry. There would thus be 1,000 females to be placed in the column of the unmarried, for the year for which this account is taken. In the next year there would be one twentieth of the females arriving at twenty in that year, or 1,000 more, to be added to the 1,000 of the preceding year, except so far as this last number was diminished by death, and so on ad infinitium. Thus, as we said before, if every female throughout the state married the day she arrived at the marriageable age, the column of the unmarried would be blank; but, if one twentieth remained unmarried, and continued so, this in time would amount to one twentieth of all females living in the state, who were beyond the marriageable age. It is unnecessary to say more on this point: every reader who is desirous of so doing, will be able to follow out the further particulars for himself.
There is another circumstance entitled to our consideration, before we finally determine what degree of authority is to be attributed to the Swedish Tables. In the reasonings I have exhibited, I have set down the women capable of child-bearing as one fifth of the whole community. At the same time it fully appears from the Tables, that the births of scarcely more than four to a marriage. Now, if of the number of the born only one in five is to be counted on to become a mother and give children to the next generation, it clearly follows that the number of women capable of child-bearing will in each successive generation perpetually diminish, and consequently that a population so circumstanced must be regularly advancing towards utter destruction. But the Swedish Tables, from which these two facts are taken, exhibit a progressive increase of the number of inhabitants. Either therefore this apparent contradiction must be reconciled; or the Swedish Tables must be admitted to be an imperfect authority on which to rest our conclusions.
In answer to this difficulty I would observe, in the first place, that one of the most irresistible results of the Swedish Tables, is that there are four births to a marriage. But this proposition, if true, must be equally true if taken in an inverse form, and we state it-to every four births there is a marriage, or, in other words, for every four births there is a marriageable woman. One of these propositions cannot be true, and the other false; and the number of women of an age capable of child-bearing is hereby, clearly established.
Secondly, it is proper to observe that, though it was sufficiently reasonable to set down, as the foundation of our inferences, the period in which a woman is to be considered as capable of child-bearing, as beginning when she is twenty years of age, yet this proposition is by no means absolute and uncontrollable. The Swedish law admits of the female marrying at fifteen; and as, necessarily, more human creatures live to attain the age of fifteen than of twenty, we have here a considerable addition to the stock of possible mothers. The females between fifteen and twenty form a sort of corps de reserve, from which the brigade of marriageable women may be recruited in case of necessity.
Thirdly, it is to be remembered that we found the number of births to a marriage exceeding the amount of four by a small fraction.e Now this fraction may be first sight appear scarcely worthy of notice, yet, in its operation over a nation consisting of three millions of souls, and spread over a succession of year, it would doubtless have the effect of rendering that population progressive, which without this fraction would have been stationary. There is therefore nothing contradictory and irreconcilable between the different particulars exhibited in the Swedish Tables.
Here then we are presented, as far as it goes, with a solid basis of reasoning concerning the possible increase of the numbers of mankind. Of every other country in the world we may be said in this respect to know nothing. In Sweden great labor has been continued through a series of year; and it has been prosecuted on the most enlightened principles. We learn therefore from this example, perhaps as nearly as possible, how fast the race of mankind, at least as society is at present constituted, can increase, beyond what limits of pace and speed of multiplication cannot be carried.
Sweden is a country in every respect as favorable to the experiment as we could desire. Almost all the women marry. "The continual cry of the government," as Mr. Malthus expresses it, "is for the increase of its subjects.f" And the soil is so thinly peopled, that it would require many ages of the most favorable complexion, for the inhabitants to become so multiplied by the mere power of procreation, as to enable them to rear and to consume all the means of subsistence which the land might easily be made to produce.
aIt is however allowed to a person of the male sex to marry at eighteen, provided he has any landed property, holds any office, or has in any other way the visible source of a regular income. Handbook i Svenska Kyrkelagfaranheten, or Manual of the Swedish Ecclesiastical Law, Chap. 1 § 6.
b Handbok, ubi supra.
c Table VI, p. 158.
d Mr. Nairman, one of the librarians to Sir Joseph Banks.
e Page 172.
f Vol. I, p.391.
• Book 2, Chapter 07 : Recapitulation of the Evidence of the Swedish Tables
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Annual Deaths on an Average of 21 years, from 1755 to 1776
| Age | Males | Females |
| Under one year | 9,664 | 8,355 |
| Between 1 and 3 | 3,592 | 3,531 |
| 3-5 | 1,816 | 1,774 |
| 5-10 | 1,789 | 1,672 |
| 10-15 | 893 | 802 |
| 15-20 | 741 | 714 |
| 20-25 | 874 | 776 |
| 25-30 | 879 | 872 |
| 30-35 | 953 | 1,058 |
| 35-40 | 907 | 901 |
| 40-45 | 1,119 | 1,129 |
| 45-50 | 1,077 | 958 |
| 50-55 | 1,233 | 1,127 |
| 55-60 | 1,180 | 1,163 |
| 60-65 | 1,383 | 1,597 |
| 65-70 | 1,328 | 1,510 |
| 70-75 | 1,360 | 1,935 |
| 75-80 | 1,023 | 1,527 |
| 80-85 | 784 | 1,230 |
| 85-90 | 883 | 609 |
| Upwards of 90- | 195 | 339 |
| blank | 33, 180 | 33, 579 |
| Age | Males | Females |
| Under one year | 33882 | 333640 |
| Between 1 and 3 | 62155 | 63005 |
| 3-5 | 62696 | 63551 |
| 5-10 | 121871 | 122460 |
| 10-15 | 117879 | 118419 |
| 15-20 | 103093 | 105845 |
| 20-25 | 91907 | 102306 |
| 25-30 | 82919 | 93315 |
| 30-35 | 78615 | 87129 |
| 35-40 | 70390 | 77077 |
| 40-45 | 68961 | 70405 |
| 45-50 | 52083 | 59580 |
| 50-55 | 44908 | 52689 |
| 55-60 | 36258 | 44211 |
| 60-65 | 30772 | 39416 |
| 65-70 | 21170 | 29610 |
| 70-75 | 14610 | 21776 |
| 75-80 | 8224 | 12515 |
| 80-85 | 4036 | 6418 |
| 85-90 | 1522 | 2492 |
| Upwards of 90 | 486 | 869 |
| Males | 1,103,432 | 1,206,728 |
| Females | 1,206,728 | blank |
| Total | 2,310,160 | blank |
[196]
The result of the whole then is, that there is some probability, but by no means a certainty, that the population of Sweden has experienced an increase in most periods of time, from the commencement of the enumerations in the middle of the last century, to the present hour. But it is impossible to ascertain the rate of that increase, since its very existence is by no means beyond the reach of doubt. And yet this is all we have, by way of evidence, from the source of enumerations, of the inherent power in man of augmenting the number of his species. Respecting Sweden we have something approaching to authentic information: we may safely pronounce, that if there has been any actual increase, it at least amounts to comparatively very little. Of the rest of the world, so far as relates to a comparison of the number of native inhabitants from parent to child in successive periods, we know nothing.
• Book 2, Chapter 08 : Population of Other Countries in Europe Considered
[197]
The reader however would have some reason to be dissatisfied with what has hithero been delivered on the subject of European population, if I confine my observations to Sweden only.
I will here therefore subjoin a few remarks tending to shew that there is nothing which has been collected concerning the other countries of Europe, that is any respect weakens, but is rather calculated to confirm, the conclusions I have formed.
These remarks shall be particularly directed to two points: first, the proportion which the women capable of child-bearing exhibit to the gross population; and secondly, the proportion between marriages and births, as it is found in the different countries of Europe.
The best information that can be had on the first of these points, viz; the proportionate number of females capable of child-bearing to the whole of any mass of population, exclusively of the Swedish accounts, is to be found in the collections that have been inserted by Dr.
[198]
Price, in his Observations on Reversionary Payments. These I will take in the order in which they occur. At the same time it is proper to observe, that his conclusions are of little avail, in balance with those I have already exhibited; first, because they are all cases built upon a very small number of persons compared with the enumerations of Sweden; and secondly, inasmuch as those numbers are arbitrarily and artificially taken, and rest upon no better evidence that that of the bills of mortality for the respective districts and countries.
Dr. Price's object having been very different from that which we are here considering, I find myself under the necessity of subjecting his statements to a certain process, before they can be applied to the purpose of this investigation. The inquiry of that writer was respecting the value of lives, and the different probabilities that exist as to the age at which human creatures shall die. He therefore supposed a thousand, or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand persons to be born at the same time, and then calculated, according to certain observations, by what degrees the ranks of this brigade or legion of human creatures would become thinned. My business is not with an imaginary number of persons, all born on the same day, but with real human societies, as we find, or may conceive, them constituted. Real human societies, particularly in old established countries, are made
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Up of persons of all ages, from the cradle to the extremity of decrepitude. To find out therefore from Dr. Prince's Tables how many woman, between the ages of twenty and forty-five years, would be living in any community at any assigned period, I was reduced to the necessity of striking an average between the number of females that, according to Dr. Price, would reach the age of twenty, and the number that would reach the age of forty-five, and of thus settling the proportion that would be living in any community at a given time. For example:
In Table the Eighth, shewing the Probabilities of Life at Norwich, in Dr. Price's worka, it is calculated that out of 1185 births, there were 467 living at the age of twenty, and 311 at the age of forty-five, which gives an average of 389. Of these if half were females, we shall have females proper for childbearing 195, about one sixth part of the whole.
Table the Ninth is Mr. Simpson's Calculation of the Probability of the Duration of Life in London, founded on the London Bills of Mortality for ten years, from 1728 to 1727 inclusive b. In this Table it appears that of one thousand births, 360 were living at twenty years of age, and 192 at forty-five, giving an average of 276. Of these, one half, or 139, may be taken to be
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females proper for child bearing being one seventh of the whole.
It is easy in the same manner to ascertain the number of females proper for child-bearing in every Table of Population, in which the ages are specified. I shall therefore content myself with exhibiting the general results, which, being thus brought together, may readily be compared one with another.
Showing the Proportion of Females proper for Child-bearing to be found in Different Masses of Population
| Place | Population | Females between 20 and 40 | Proportion nearly | Reference to PriceÕs Observations, vol.II |
| Norwich | 1185 | 195 | 1 to 6 | Table VIII, p.296 |
| London 1728 to 1737 | 1000 | 138 | 1 to 7 1/4 | Table IX, p.297. |
| London 1759 to 1768 | 1518 | 192 | 1 to 8 | Table XV, p.304. |
| London 1771 to 1780 | 23,452 | 4005 | 1 to 7 3/10 | Table XVI, p. 305. |
| Northampton | 11,650 | 2095 | 1 to 5.5 | Table XVII, p.311 |
| Warrington | 2700 | 459 | 1 to 5 9/10 | Table XLI, p.384 |
| Chester | 4066 | 1000 | 1 to 4 | Table XLII, p.392. |
| Holy Cross | 966 | 230 | 1 to 4 1/3 | Table LI, p.446 |
| Electoral Mark of Brandenburg | 1000 | 215 | 1 to 4 3/5 | Table LI, p.446 |
| Holland | 1400 | 344 | 1 to 4 | Table LIII, p.456. |
| France | 10,000 | 2449 | 1 to 4 | Ibid. |
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To impeach the Swedish authorities. In France and Holland, where we have least reason to depend on the accuracy of the accounts, the women proper for child-bearing are stated as one fourth of the community. In London, on the contrary, they are only as one to seven, and one to eight. The average of the whole however is something under one to five.
The next question is as to the number of births to a marriage, whether any accounts that have been collected in other parts of Europe might lead to a suspicion that the Swedish Tables have put them down at too low an amount. One of the most considerable authorities on this subject is John Peter Sussmilch, a German author, who is copiously quoted by Dr. Price in his Observations on Reversionary Payments, and by Mr. Malthus
in the Essay on Population. The title of his work, first published in 1765 in two volumes octavo, and since enlarged into three, is Die Gottliche Ordnung, &c.; or, The Order of Divine Providence, as Displayed in the Births, Deaths, and Increase of the Human Race.-I may observe by the way, that the object of Sussmilch in writing was precisely the reverse of that of Mr. Malthus his view being, first to shew the possibility of an increase in the population of the earth, and then to recommend the adoption of such means as he could suggest for realizing that increase. This author appears to have exerted great in
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4 3/10 to one nearly. Now I should lay it down as a general maxim, that where chastity and a habitual practice of the domestic duties most prevail, there we should expect to see the most numerous families and the largest crop of children in general: an I am yet to learn that France possesses the superiority in this respect over Russia, Denmark, Germany, and Great Britain. I therefore look with a particular degree of distrust upon the French registers.
Meanwhile, be this as it will, the result of all these statements appears clearly to be, that throughout Europe, taking one country with another, the average falls short of four children to a marriage.
From the particulars stated in this chapter I am entitled to conclude, that the accounts collected in all other European countries do not contradict, but on the contrary strongly tend to confirm, the conclusions suggested by the Swedish Tables. On them therefore we have every reason, which the nature of the case admits, to rely.
a Observations on Reversionary Payments, vol. II p. 296
b P. 207.
• Book 2, Chapter 09 : Principles Respecting the Increase or Decrease of the Numbers of Mankind Resumed
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THERE is a further point highly worthy of attention in the subject now under consideration, and our investigation will be incomplete if that is not distinctly adverted to.
We have found that, according to all Tables which have yet been formed upon the registers of births and marriages, the union of two persons of opposite sexes does not produce upon an average, in Europe at least, more than four births.
But it may be objected that this rule applies to Europe only, and may have relation to some accidents or customs which belong peculiarly to this division of the globe. In other countries the proportion of the number of births to the number of marriageable women may be greater. In America Dr. Franklin proposes that we should set it down as eight to one.
It may be further objected, that this rule may at last prove fallacious, as being founded on nothing but the actual registers of births and marriages
[207]
which after all nobody will affirm to be perfect and infallible. [The question of number of marriageable women stands on higher grounds.] To this we have hirtherto given but one answer, respecting on the surprising coincidence in this respect of all the registers which have hitherto been produced from different countries, governed by laws and modes of record extremely unlike to each other.
But, wherever any phenomenon universally prevails, there may be found a principle, built up on the whole mass of the observations that have been made, shewing why it ought to be expected universally to prevail. It is the glory and the privilege of the human mind to investigate such principle. This is the concluding step by which observation is reduced into science: and, if it can be effectually accomplished, then, and then only, the enquirer after truth arrives at a suitable state of repose. He knows what has been, not merely by a record of apparent facts, but by the more satisfactory method of analysis, and he is able with some degree of confidence to predict what shall be.
The first consideration that occurs, which is calculated to qualify our ideas on the subject, is what I would call the value of a marriage, or the number of years which a married life, taking married lives on average, may be computed to endure. If the human species were immortal, or, more exactly speaking, if men and women in their greatest vigor and the most procreative period of
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their existence, were not exposed to the accident of death, then the value of a marriage ,or the number of years that it might be computed to endure, would be twenty-five years.
But this is not the case. No period of human life is exempted from the great law of mortality; and this consideration plainly limits the number of children that a marriage, when we are engaged in the survey of a community or political society, may be expected to produce.
Some women die in the first year of their marriage. These may for the most part be regarded as leaving no offspring. Others die in the second, third, or fourth year of their marriage, and so on through the whole period of twenty five years.
To the mortality of the women, we must add that of their husbands. It has appeared that a very small proportion of widows marry again, consequently the death of the husband may be considered as operating no less effectually to put a stop to the fruitfulness of a child bearing woman, than the death of the woman herself.
All that relates to this part of the subject is susceptible of an exact calculation; and Dr. Halley and Dr. Price have furnished us with Tables of the probabilities of human life, from which may be easily extracted whatever may conduce to throw light on this question.
I have myself entered into some computations
[209]
founded on the data furnished by these authors and one or two of my friends, more devoted than myself to matters of calculation, have furnished me with others which I had intended to insert in this place. But I am unwilling to give to a book, the express object of which is to correct a pernicious, and unhappily a widely diffused error, any portion of a dry and repulsive air, that can without injury be avoided. Whoever is disposed fully to investigate the subject for himself, may easily form such computations as I have done. The general result of my investigation has been, that marriages, taken one with another, are worth about sixteen years.
To assist any one who should be inclined to go over the same ground, it is proper however that I should mention the data upon which I have proceeded. I have supposed one hundred thousand marriages to be solemnized. I have taken for granted, that the females of these marriages were every one of them precisely twenty years of age. As men are found to marry somewhat later in life than women, I have taken the bridegrooms as all of them of the age of twenty-five. This in reality produces a very slight difference in the result, from what it would have been if I had taken them also at twenty. But in matters of computation one must fix one's foot somewhere.
With these premises I have proceeded upon ihe foundations afforded by Dr. Halley and Dr.
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Price, to calculate, among one hundred thousand men and one hundred thousand women of the ages above specified, how many would die an nually through the whole period of twenty-five years. The result of my computation has been to fix the value of a marriage at about sixteen years.
Let us next consider the various circumstances in human society, which limit this absolute measure, and consequently bring the average amount of children that a marriage shall produce, or, more accurately speaking, the proportion to be borne by the number of births to the number of women capable of bearing children in any community, greatly within that which the period of sixteen years for the duration of a marriage might lead us to expect.
We have hitherto, in our community of one hundred thousand men and one hundred thousand women, taken for granted that all marry, and that the women all marry at twenty, and the men at twenty-five. But that is not really the case with any community that ever existed on the face of the earth.
First, all women do not marry. We have seen reason to believe, that the number of women who spend their lives in the single state is by no means so large, as our first reflections might have led us to suppose. They are however a considerable number, and constitute a real
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proportion of the number of females of an age adapted for child bearing in every community.
Secondly, it is by no means true, that every woman marries at twenty, and every man at twenty-five years. To marry earlier than twenty will not, I believe, tend to increase the chance of augmenting the population in any country. But many marry later from motives of prudence. And, wherever a great proportion of females are employed in the capacity of domestic servants, this of course opposes a sensible obstacle to early marriage on the part of the female. But, in case the husband or the wife at the period of marriage is older than is above set down, the chance of the number of years that their union shall last is diminished; and in the case of the woman, the abstract period of twenty-five years in which we have supposed her capable of child-bearing, is reduced also.
Thirdly, we have reckoned death only, as a period putting a termination on the value of a marriage. But there is a sickness not unto death. And, in a numerous community, the amount of the females who, under the influence of temporary disease, may for a longer or shorter time be prevented from bearing children will not be inconsiderable.
I may add here, that, in calculating the number of births to a marriage, we may reasonably take into our consideration the duty which nature imposes upon the human female of suckling
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her offspring. This is scarcely omitted in the lower and more numerous walks of life: and where it is, perhaps it always happens that some female is occupied in the care of the infant, who might otherwise by child bearing have been engaged in increasing the numbers of the community.
Fourthly, a further deduction from the number of children born into the world, or from the average amount that we should otherwise find of births to a marriage, is produced by the number of women who in the experiment are found barren, and of marriages which afford no children: for debility, in the man may equally be attended with that effect, as barrenness in the woman.
Fifthly, we must subtract from the number of women, who might otherwise be expected to prove mothers a certain proportion of women, who by some defect of constitution have a fatal indisposition to produce any but abortive births, and who, though often with child, are never found to continue pregnant long enough to produce a living offspring.
Sixthly, there is a considerable number of married women who may be placed in a class next above those last named, that though not absolutely incapable of bringing a living child into the world, are yet found during the whole period of their marriage, though it should last from the age of twenty to the age of forty-five years, some never to produce more than one, and others not more than two children.
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Lastly. When we take the term of twenty-five years, from twenty to forty-five years of age, as the period in which a woman is capable of child-bearing, we must not suppose that capacity to subsist in equal strength during the whole period. A woman, endowed with all the fruitfulness of the most fruitful of her sex, may for a time bear a child regularly within a certain interval. From twenty to thirty, we will say, she may do so. But this is less likely to happen after thirty; it is still more improbable after thirty-five; and the improbability is further increased after forty. It is not the march of nature immediately to step out of one state into another state essentially different. The colors of Nature are insensibly blended, and change by very gentle gradations, from one tint, to another of contrasted or opposite hue. Of consequence, forty-five may be the age at which a woman may be calculated on as ceasing to be capable of bearing children; but for a number of years before that, she no longer the teeming mother, the prolific female, she was. This has happened repeatedly within my own knowledge, and similar cases will occur to every one, that the woman who in the flower of her age bore a child every second year, or perhaps, if she did not suckle her children, still oftener, comes afterwards to the condition of bringing a child after an interval of three, four, or even five years.
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To illustrate this let us consider, that when we have taken sixteen years as the value of a marriage, this is an average duration, and implies that half of them last less, and half more than sixteen years. Of consequence the whole period of a marriage is by no means to be taken as belonging to a vigorous and prolific period of life, but as indifferently spread over the entire period from twenty to forty-five years of age. That we may understand the value of this consideration I would once more have recourse to the Swedish Tables, deducing from them a view of the number of women to be found in Sweden in 1763, of all different ages that fall within the child-bearing period. To render this more intelligible to every reader, I will divide them into twenty-five classes, one for every year. I might have calculated the chances of survivorship from year to year according to the Tables of Halley and Price; but this would have made so little difference, that I have preferred the simple method of dividing the number of females between twenty and twenty-five, and so on, by five, and setting them down accordingly, as follows:
| In their 21st year 21,023 | In their 29th year 20,200 |
| 22nd --- 21,023 | 30th --- 20,200 |
| 23rd --- 21,023 | 31st --- 19,162 |
| 24th --- 21,023 | 32nd --- 19,162 |
| 25th --- 21,023 | 33rd --- 19,162 |
| 26th --- 20,200 | 34th --- 19,162 |
| 27th --- 20,200 | 35th --- 19,162 |
| 28th --- 20,200 | 36th --- 16,290 |
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| In their 37th year 16,290 | In their 41st year 14,971 |
| 38th --- 16,290 | 42nd --- 14,971 |
| 39th --- 16,290 | 43rd --- 14,971 |
| 40th --- 16,290 | 44th --- 14,971 |
| 45th --- 14,971 | |
| Amount of fractions rejected | 6 |
| Total | 458,236 |
Hence it appears that, out of 458,236 women, living in Sweden in 1763 within the child-bearing age, 74,855 had passed their fortieth year, 81,450 were between thirty-five and forty, and only 21,023 of the whole number were in the twenty-first year of their age. It is from these only that we can expect, if married, all the fruitfulness of which the human female, upon an average, shall be found capable. It is easy to see therefore what proportion of the whole were in the highest state of vigor and fecundity, and what deduction as to the chance of frequent child-bearing we are entitled to make, for the number of those with whom that state was entirely past. This of course forms a very considerable deduction from the average number we might otherwise expect of births to a marriage.
Let us put together the different considerations, which are calculated to persuade us that, from the number of women living at a given time in any country between the ages of twenty and forty-five years, a smaller number of children will be born, than from the mere
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calculation of the probability of the lives of the parties we might at first have been led to expect.
1. All will not marry. 2. A great number of brides are above twenty, and bridegrooms above twenty-five years of age; and this reduces the number of years, that their union might otherwise have laster, and the period in which the woman might have lasted, and the period in which the woman might have been counted on as capable of child-bearing. 3. A deduction will arise upon the average of births, not only from the mortality of the child-bearing women, but from the consideration of a certain number in every year, that by ill health will be cut off from the chance of becoming mothers. 4. There will be a certain number of barren wives and imbecile husbands. 5. Some women have a predisposition to produce only abortions. 6. Many women are found never to bear more than one, or more than two children. 7. Though the actual period of the capacity of child-bearing may be states as from the age of twenty to the age of forty-five years, yet the activeness of that capacity will be found to be greatly diminished, for a considerable time before it totally ceases.
The whole of these considerations, if accurately weighed, will perhaps lead to a conclusion, similar to that which will be found suggested by all the reports which have yet been collected of all the marriages and births that take place in European society, viz., that four births to a marriage are an ample average allowance.
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Let us turn from these, which may be considered as constituting a sort of à priori reasonings on the subject, to a summary of what may be regarded as the result of every man's observation and experience with relation to the question in hand.
At first sight it is probably, that most men's superficial impression ont he subject will be at variance with the conclusion above laid down, and they will start with incredulity from the average of four children to a marriage, as being greatly under the truth. Every man has seen within the circle of his acquaintances families of eight, or perhaps ten children. It is not unexampled that the same woman may have brought sixteen living human beings into the world.
But then it is to be considered, that these are remarkable cases, which every body notices, and every body talks of. They are not one in twenty, and add little to the average; not half a child.
Though a marriage have only one, two, three or even no children, this may not be from barrenness in the ordinary sense, or from any of the causes I have recently enumerated. The marriage may be unprolific from the removal of either of the parties by death. But in the one case as in the other it counts equally in the average against large families.
Large families, as I have said, always attract a certain degree of observation. The marriages
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which produce few, are extremely common, and therefore pass without remark. The woman who dies, is soon forgotten.
These remarks are susceptible of easy illustration. Let us take five marriages: one produces twelve children, one five, two four, and one none: the sum is twenty-one children; scarcely more than four to a marriage.
Again, let us take five other marriages: one produces seventeen children, two two children each, and two none: the sum is as before twenty-one; scarcely more than four to a marriage.
Here then, if any where, we are presented with the real checks upon population, as they may be supposed to operate under the most favorable circumstances. No one of the seven checks above enumerated, even if we add to them the limitation of the value of a marriage arising from the precariousness of life either in the wife or the husband, comes within the meaning of the terms, as used by Mr. Malthus, "vise and misery." They are indeed the Law of Nature, benevolently providing that we should not "live like Nature's bastards, but her sons," and not be cut off from our natural inheritance, from that food which is necessary to and the right of all that are born, through the crowding and elbowing and violence of the multitude of claimants. This is a Law of Nature, the reverse of that impiously set up in the Essay on population. It is not a Law, "forbidding to marry," telling
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the new-born infant to "be gone" from the face of the earth, and pronouncing sentence that "there is no vacant room from him." It is a Law, that is every where executed, in all places and at all times, constantly and in silence, no man 's attention being called to its operation, no man 's aid being required to its administration, and accompanied with no calamity, unless we should chuse to call our common frailty by that name, and reproach the God who made us, that he did not ordain us another species of beings than that which we are.
From the evidence then collected in this and the six preceding chapters in appears, that Nature takes more care of her works, than such irreverent authors as Mr. Malthus are apt to suppose,-- indeed exactly that care, which elder and more sober writers were accustomed to give her credit for. She has not left it to the caprice of the human will, whether the noblest species of beings that she has planted on this earth, shall be continued or not. She does not ask our aid to keep down the excess of human population. And, however an ascetic and barbarous superstition has endeavored in different countries and ages to counteract her genial laws, the propensity remains entire; and nothing but a despotism, founded at once upon the menaces of a dismal hereafter as the retribution of a breach of the vows of celibacy, joined with the utmost seve-
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rity of temporal punishments, can suspend its operation.
Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurrel.
And this happens, not as Mr. Malthus supposes, by an impulse, similar to that of hunger, and equally wild for its gratification. It answers better to the apostolical description of charity, or love. "It suffereth long, and is kind. It beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." It tranquilly postpones its purposes from month to month, and from year to year: but they are not the less firmly fixed: and both man and woman are intimately convinced, that they have not fulfilled the ends of their being, nor had a real experience of the privileges of human existence, without having entered into the ties, and participated in the delights of domestic life.
• Book 2, Chapter 10 : Of the Population of England and Wales
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BUT, in opposition to the conclusions and computations of the preceding chapters, the adherents of Mr. Malthus may allege the accounts which have been delivered by various writers, and lately published under the sanction of high authority, respecting the growing population of England and Wales.
There is no actual enumeration of the inhabitants of this country, except the two which were made by the direction of the two acts of parliament in 1801 and 1811. These stand as follows.
Enumeration for 1801 ---- 9,168,000
Enumeration for 1811 ---- 10,468000
For the amount of the population at other periods, different modes of computation have been resorted to.
First, the writer of the Observations prefixed to the Abstract of Population for 1811, as published by the authority, has proceeded upon the amount of the registered baptisms for different periods, and calculated by the rule of proportion, thus: "If 263, 409 baptisms, the average
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medium of the baptisms for the five years preceding the enumeration of 1801, were produced from a population of 9,168,000, from what population were 157,307, the baptisms of 1700, produced?" And upon this basis he has constructed the following
| ENGLAND AND WALES. | |
| In the year | POPULATION. |
| 1700 | 5,475,000 |
| 1710 | 5,240,000 |
| 1720 | 5,565,000 |
| 1730 | 5,796,000 |
| 1740 | 6,064,000 |
| 1750 | 6,467,000 |
| 1760 | 6,736,000 |
| 1770 | 7,428,000 |
| 1780 | 7,953,000 |
| 1785 | 8,016,000 |
| 1790 | 8,675,000 |
| 1795 | 9,055,000 |
| 1801 | 9,168,000 |
| 1805-6 | 9,828,000 |
| 1811 | 10,488,000 |
A mode frequently resorted to by writers on political economy, in estimating the population of a country, has been by a calculation built on the number of houses. The following is a Table collecting the different accounts on this subject under one point of view.
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| In 1600 | ------------ | 1,230,000 a |
| 1685 | ---------------- | 1,300,000 a |
| 1690 | ---------------- | 1,319,215b |
| 1759 | ---------------- | 986,482 b |
| 1761, or 17c65 | --- | 980,692 b |
| 1777 | ---------------- | 952,734 b |
| 1801 | --------------- | 1,633,399 d |
| 1811 | --------------- | 1,848,524 d |
A third method, perhaps as satisfactory as either of the preceding, would be, to proceed upon the amount of the registered burials for different periods, and to calculate by the rule of proportion, thus, if 192,000 burials, the average amount for five years, from 1795 to 1800, were produced from a population of 9,168,000, from what population were so many burials, the registered amount of a remoter year, produced?
I am afraid however that the conclusion form all these computations will be, that no certainty, no consistent and plausible result, can be deduced by any of the modes hitherto devised.
We have the inference drawn from the registered amount of baptisms, as calculated by the editor of the Reports.
The calculation from the number of houses in England and Wales ought in all reason to confirm the Table founded upon the baptisms: or it
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must be allowed in a certain degree to weaken the evidence which the Table affords.
The amount of houses, as exhibited in the preceding page, is obtained as follows. The first three items are taken from the hearth-books, there being at that time a tax of two shillings for every hearth. The next three are in like manner extracted from the returns to the tax-office, given by the surveyors of the house and window duties for the different departments.e And the last two are taken from the returns to the two population-acts for those years respectively.
Now, if I calculate the question of inhabitants to a house by the rule of proportion, and suppose as many persons to a house in 1690 as in 1811, to which I see no reasonable objection, the population of England and Wales at the former of those periods will appear to be upwards of seven millions. But Mr.Rickman, by his computation upon the register of baptisms, makes the population of England and Wales for 1700 and 1710 (for he has not extended his calculation beyond the commencement of the eighteenth century) to be only 5,475,000 and 5,240,000 respectively.
Another conclusion that would follow from our calculating on the number of houses, would be that the country was rapidly depopulating
[225]from the Revolution at least up to the year 1777, a conclusion, which no reasoning founded upon any other consideration will incline us to believe. It is obvious indeed, that, where there is a tax to be collected, a variety of circumstances will vitiate the returns, so as to make them very far from being entitled to implicit credit. I should refer myself therefore only to the actual enumerations. There the inquiry was directed to the clergyman or overseer in each parish, who could hardly be conceived to have any temptation to conceal the number of houses in his district: to which I may add that a house is a sort of commodity not easily hid.
Let us next look to the number of burials, a species of register, I should think, as little liable to error as that of baptisms. Every human creature that is born is not carried to the priest of the parish to be baptized; but every human creature that dies, unless at sea, is consigned to the earth, and his obsequies are rarely unaccompanied with the ceremonies of religion.
The question above-stated was, If 192,000 burials, the average amount for five years, from 1795 to 1800, were produced from a population of 9,168,000, from what population were so many burials, the registered amount of a remoter year, produced?
But here we are stopped on the threshold by the information of the editor of the Reports,
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who assures us,f that "the average number of registered burials (though considerably fluctuating from year to year) has remained stationary during twenty-one years, from 1780 to 1800; the first five years of which period, as well as the last five years, and all the twenty-one years together, equally averaging at about 192,000 burials per annum."
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[231]
excusably looked shy upon the questioner, and recollected a maxim current in ordinary life, that truth is not always to be spoken. The second time, having experiences no ill consequences from the first experiment, they became more frank. It is therefore very conceivable, that there was not one human creature more in the country, when the population was returned as 10,488,000 in 1811, than when it was returned as 9,168,000 in 1801.
I have already said, that the enumerations of Great Britain in 1801 and 1811, were merely so much labor thrown away. Being taken with such inconceivable absurdity, all ages and sexes being confounded together, they can, in my conception, be made the basis of no reasoning. We are therefore reduced to conjecture merely, as to the cause of the inequality of amount tin the two enumerations. If the population had been divided into classes according to every five or ten years' difference of ages, as in Sweden and in the United States, the truth would have flashed upon us at once. The added numbers by direct procreation in the enumeration of 1811 would have been all under ten years of age, and of consequence the number of such children in 1811 would have exceeded the number in 1801 by the precise amount of 1,320,000. This would have been as evidence that could hardly have been called in question.
Is England more or less populous now, than
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it was a hundred years ago, or than it was forty years back? Each man answers this question according to his preconceived opinions.
Man is a migrating animal. He removes from one place to another, from the town to the country, and from the country to the town, as he shall happen to be impressed with the notion that in this or in that he shall be most likely to find his well-being.
London I am persuaded is more populous now, that it was at any remote period: but is England more populous?
The life of man is too short for any accurate ideas on such a question; and in this respect it is not true, that "one generation telleth to another." Our fathers thought, it may be, that their country was well peopled and prosperous. But did these words convey the same image to their minds as to ours? The observation of man is too narrow to scan a country, 580 miles in length, and 370 in breadth. We see that one spot becomes more crowded, and another thinner of people; but we do not see how far the one does or does not balance the other. The observation of the same individual varies from youth to age. Our ides become modified from day to day, and we do not observe the variation; and the notion that the same set of words excites in us at twenty, and at fifty, is essentially different. Things alter, and appear to us the same, and continue the same, and appear
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to us materially changed. I remember a friend of minem, who after a lapse of ten years visited the house where he had resided when he was a boy: he was persuaded that the garden was enclosed with a wall that effectually cut off the view of the circumjacent country, and felt much surprised at his return to find this wall scarcely higher than his breast: if he had continued all the time on the spot, it is probable he never would have perceived the alteration. Out minds change much as our bodies do, in which it had been computed that not a particle remains the same after a lapse of twenty years.
We are like children at a juggler's exhibition, who, while their attention is craftily called to a particular point, look only there, and see nothing of the general scene, and of what is passing elsewhere, that it was more material to observe. We see the high days, and the holiday-making, and how men crowd together to shows, and courts, and prosperous cities, but what passed in the obscure nooks and corners of the state we do not see. If I travel from London to York, I can count up the cottages, and observe how many carts and carriages and foot-passengers go along the road within a given number of miles, and what appearance there is of populousness and activity, or the contrary; but I do not
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Know what Addison, and Swift, and Congreve, and the most competent observers saw, when according to the Table of Houses there was an appearance of the greatest numbers of mankind, though their local arrangement was different from that of the present day. Nay, if I had myself performed the journey twenty years ago, the memory of a man is of so irretentive a texture, and his judgment so easily seduced, that I shall not now distinctly call to mind what I saw then, and shall be bribed insensibly to accommodate the comparison to that system of political economy, whatever it is, that I have happened to embrace. The collation we attempt, is either at too near intervals, when it is not reasonable to expect any considerable alteration, or at too remote ones, when the image which was once distinct in the mind, has become so obscure and faded, and has suffered so much from the injury of the seasons, and the variety of scenes and impressions which have intervened, that a wise man would hardly have the courage to rely upon it.
It is difficult tot conceive how the notion of the increasing population of our country has become so generally prevalent. Is the population of the world increased? Have the numbers of the human species been increasing from the earliest accounts of time? There is nothing, to speak moderately, in the history of the earth, to authorize this opinion.
a Price, Vol. II. p. 140.
b Ibid, p. 163.
c Ibid, p. 141.
d Population Abstract.
e Price ubi supra.
f P. xxii.
g Ibid.
mThe reverend Joseph Fawcet, the friend of my youth, my first companion of imaginative soul and luxuriant ideas, whose name it is gratifying tome to record though on so trivial an occasion.
• Book 2, Chapter 11 : Proofs of the Geometrical Ratio from the Phenomenon of a Pestilence
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ONE frequent source of the mistakes that have been made on the subject of population, has been derived from the consideration of a pestilence. It has been said, that, when a nation has been laid waste by this great scourge of mankind, the loss is speedily made up, the lands are again cultivated, the peoples repeopled, and the country grows as flourishing as ever. The received idea is, that, if you happened not to be a spectator of the distress while it lasted, and if you returned to the country that had been visited by such a calamity after an interval of ten years, you would know nothing of the matter. Influenced by these conceptions, it has been inferred by Hume, one of the most subtle of all reasoners, that "if the restraints which the desire and power of propagation lie under were completely removed, the human species would more than double every generation."a I have that deference for the great authority of
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Hume, that for this reason principally I have determined to devote a chapter to the question.
Let it be remembered then, that, when London or any other considerable town became thinned by the plague, this was not entirely the consequence of the numbers that died. Every one that had the power, and almost that had not, fled from the dreadful scene; London was indeed a melancholy solitude. Her citizens migrated in multitudes to the country parts of England; but, when the infection was at an end, they migrated back again.
If, in consequence of a calamity of this sort, there appears, when it is over, eligible place for more inhabitants, this eligibleness will tempt population from the remoter parts of the empire, or from foreign countries. Wherever there is soil well prepared for cultivation, and a country, desirable to dwell in, but ill provided with inhabitants, tither human creatures will feel prompted to remove. Man us a being that wanders from Dan to Beersheba, from Copenhagen to Jerusalem, and from Europe to America, in pursuit of happiness. But of these migrations no European government takes an account; and the new comers speedily become consolidated with the old inhabitants. We must have regulations, such as are said to exist in some parts of Asia, forbidding every man to quit the district in which he was born, before we can easily obtain accurate notions of population.
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And here it may be useful to recollect what was proved some time back, that there can be no real increase in population, but by an increase in the number of women capable of childbearing. The rest of the society, the old and the young, except so far as they contribute to this, may come and go as they please. They are useless adjuncts, drone in the great give of population, and in the point of the view now under consideration not worthy to be counted. Mr. Malthus has taken infinite pains in comparing the number of births and deaths in given situations and periods, and is of the opinion that, if in any one year and another many more human beings are born than die, the population is substantially increased. But all his pains (so far as "short periods" are concerned) is thrown again. If indeed, as Mr. Malthus expresses it, "the population is continually pressing hard against the limits of subsistence," and Ave are in want of food sufficient to nourish us, it may then be desirable that the infirm and the useless should die off as soon as they could; and we might be incited, except so far as we are restrained by religion or humanity, to imitate what is related of some savage nations, to bury our grandfathers and grandmothers alive, or tie them to a tree, and leave them to starve. But their protracted existence adds not an atom of the real power and source of population. In civilized society they may be useful, ornamental, admirable;
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but in the single question which Mr. Malthus has so successfully pressed upon general observation, they are mere weeds in the garden of society, a sort of annuals or biennials, that may drop off at pleasure, but add nothing to the substantial support of population, or to the chance that the nation or tribe to which they belong shall continue in their posterity.
"If you happened not to be a spectator of the pestilence while it lasted, and returned to the country after a lapse of ten years, you would not be aware of any alteration that had taken place." What would be the real state of the case? In ten years many of the men and women that existed in the beginning of the period would have deceased, according to the never sleeping, never to be suspended, course of nature. But in the mean time not one woman, not one man, would have been added to the population, by procreation only. Instead of this, we should see a fry of little children, the stay, and the single hope of the age to come. We must wait sixteen years at least, if not twenty, before we can look for a single mother from this quarter, to replace the race of mothers, who in the mean time have for the most part gone off the stage of efficient fecundity, until the pestilence ceased. A portentous gap, that might almost make us tremble for the continuance of the race. The only relief we have have from this, is in contemplating the female children born before
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the pestilence, some of whom, together with some of the married women, would have survived the general calamity. So clear it is, that we must rely upon the migrating principle in man, and not upon procreation, for any sudden restoration of numbers and prosperity, after a great scene of indiscriminate devastation.
aEssays, Part II, Essay xi.
• Book 2, Appendix : Tables Of The American Census
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That the reader may be fully possessed of all the documents which should enable him to form correct notions on the subject, I have thought proper to insert here the Three Tables of the American Census, as they appear in Pitkin's Statistical View of the United States. I should have been glad to have printed from the Tables published by the authority of the American government; but I have been able to procure only those for 1810.
W. G.
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• Book 3, Chapter 01 : Futility of Mr. Malthus's Doctrine Respecting the Checks on Population
IN the preceding Book I have taken for the subject of my inquiry the possible progress of mankind under peculiarly favorable circumstances as to the increase of their numbers I have produced the example of Sweden as the most advantageous specimen of the kind that is contained in the records of history I have not contented myself with this but have proceeded in the endeavor to establish certain principles on the subject. From the example of Sweden, corroborated by views drawn from all other countries of Europe, in which any progress has been made in collecting Tables that have reference to population, I have sought to fix certain maxims which may be of use to guide us in our speculations on the subject. To this I have added some general reasonings, built upon the nature of marriage, and the numbers and fruitfulness of human females, calculated to confirm these facts, and to shew from the nature of things why they should be found such as they are.
But there is another question behind, which will be of scarcely less importance in enabling us to settle our opinions on the subject of this work. This is (to borrow the language of Mr. Malthus), "What is it that checks population?"
Or, I should rather chuse to express the inquiry upon which I am about ot enter thus: Population has been found, under peculiarly favorable circumstances, for example in Sweden, to have a tendency to double itself in a little more than one hundred years. But the history of the world is not in accord with the example of Sweden. We have no reason to suppose that the globe of the earth, at least so far as it was then known, was at all less populous three thousand years ago, than it is now.
The inference therefore, in the point of view in which we are here considering the subject, is, first, from the example of Sweden, that population, or the numbers of mankind, has a natural tendency to increase under particularly favorable circumstances, at the rate of a doubling in a little more than on hundred years; and, secondly, from the history of the world, that this increase is perpetually counteracted, so that we have no reason to believe that the earth is now more populous than at any past period of authentic history, or, from any ting that is at present going on on the face of the globe, that it has any likelihood to become so.
Population is kept down. This truth we learn from the history of mankind: and in this proposition I agree with Mr. Malthus.
But, in announcing this proposition, two questions occur to me. First, how is it kept down? Secondly, is it necessary for the common good, that any special attention should be given by governments and national councils, in the way of taking care that it should be kept down, or that the increase of the numbers of mankind should not be encouraged?
On the first question, [How does it happen that the population of the earth does not go on in a course of perpetual increase?] Mr. Malthus advances two propositions interchangeably, substituting the one for the other at his pleasure, as if they were only two ways of expressing the same thing: first, that population is kept down by the intervention of vise and misery: secondly, that it is kept down, because the numbers of mankind are, every where and incessantly, tending ot increase beyond the limits of the means of subsistence.
Now these propositions are so far from being synonymous, and if I may apply the word somewhat out of its usual meaning, tautological, that one of them may be true, and the other totally and entirely false.
That vise and misery have a share in keeping down the numbers of mankind, I will not deny. There may also be other causes, as yet little adverted to, which may be concerned in producing the same effect.
The most obvious causes which all history forces upon our attention, are war, pestilence, and famine. And here I would distinguish between the two agents which in Mr. Malthus's book are perpetually coupled, vise, and misery: or, as I would rather denominate them, vise, and the visitation of calamity. Pestilence is not vise; famine can scarcely deserve to be called by that name. War therefore, of these three, is the agent for thinning the ranks of mankind, which is best entitled to be denominated vise.
But how far are any of these concerned with a scarcity of the means of subsistence? Famine indeed is a sweeping name, which expresses that scarcity in its most aggravated degree. But pestilence- is that only a lack of the means of subsistence under another form? Is the plague produced by hunger? Is yellow fever produced by hunger? When our devoted country in former centuries was so often visited with the plague, where Englishmen in greater comparative want of the means of subsistence than at present?
War is, of almost any example that could be devised, well adapted to shew that Mr. Malthus's two propositions are of very different import. Do men go to war because they want the means of subsistence? Far otherwise. War in civilized countries is the offspring of pride, of wantonness, and an artificial method of thinking and living. War cannot be carried on in such countries without a previous accumulation of the means of subsistence. Money, it has often been said, is the sinew of war. It would be more accurate to say, that provisions [munition de bouche] are the sinews of war. The first care of a power going to war is to establish magazines. I may add, that money itself is nothing, except so far as it can purchase the conveniences, and, a fortiori, the necessaries of life.
So far therefore as war is concerned, I allow that the numbers of mankind are thinned by vise: So far as famine and pestilence enter into the question, I admit that the same effect may be attributed to calamity.
But I totally reject Mr. Malthus's vise and misery in the obscure details. I affirm, that would elapse,"c before the most fatal and heart-sickening consequences would be produced. And the whole tendency of his book is to prove, that the expected disasters would be as rapid, as they were irresistible in their manifestation and their progress.
The inference certainly from all history is, the population does not challenge the vigilance of governments to keep it down. The inference from all history is, that those countries, other things equal, have been happiest, where the increase of mankind has been most encouraged, and those the most miserable, in which the power of depopulation has most fully displayed itself. If an author, in the beginning of the nineteenth century of the Christian era, comes forward, to teach us a new creed, and to persuade us to abandon that which the concurrent wisdom of ages had taught us, he should surely not attempt to do this by the sole aid of a few dogmatic maxims, but should have gone through the annals of antiquity, and have shewn us where in all famous nations and states the evil crept in. The fact is completely against him. The fact is, according to the evidence of all history, that population does not require the vigilance of governments to keep it down.
When once we have discarded this cardinal error, the rest of the subject becomes a topic of laudable speculation. What tendency is there in the human species to increase their numbers? It cannot be disputed, that in some countries (Sweden for example) there appears to be a power in mankind to increase their numbers by procreation only. Under what circumstances, and for how long a time, may this power be supposed to exert itself? Under the most favorable circumstances, what would be the degree of the increase? What are the causes that check the increase, and that produce a progress in the opposite direction? For the instances appear to be much more numerous and striking of a rapid depopulation. At all events this is certain, that no governments, previously to the publication of Mr. Malthus's book, ever set themselves up for patrons of depopulation, and to "stop the propagation of mankind:" and it is scarcely less certain, that the population of the earth is not greater now than it was three thousand years ago.
If Mr. Malthus's doctrine were sound, and his novelties constituted a real discovery, the history of the population of the earth would be very different from the thing that it is. But his theory sustains the common fate of every mere hypothesis ingeniously contrived to account for the phenomena around us. It may look in some degree plausible in itself; but it will never truly tally with the facts it is brought to explain. It pays us with words; but it does not clear up a single difficulty.
The population of every old country, according to Mr. Malthus, is kept down by "pressing hard against the limits of the means of subsistence." If this were true, what would be the real state of the case in the history of all the nations of the earth? A periodical fluctuation. —That there is a change I admit, and that nations from time to time increase and decrease in the numbers of their people. But the cause of these changes has never yet been fully explained; and least of all do they square with Mr. Malthus' hypothesis —To proceed in the statement and refutation of the views exhibited in the Essay on Population. Every country, as well as North America, in the proportion of its area and its soil is capable of subsisting a given number of inhabitants. When this capacity has been used, and the country has been replenished with men, that district or portion of the globe will refuse to receive a greater number. But it is perhaps the nature of every check or reaction, to operate somewhat beyond the extent of the impulse that gave it birth. Hence, we will say, comes the depopulation, which forms so memorable a portion of the records of universal history. That we may not fall into the error, so incident to the limited faculties of man, of confounding ourselves amid the complication of very large numbers, let us take a district or an island fully competent to the subsistence of one thousand human inhabitants. The power of procreation, we will assume, continually tends to increase the numbers of mankind. The population of this district therefore, having arrived at one thousand, has an abstract tendency to extend itself further. But here it is stopped by the most powerful of all causes. Calamity invades this devoted race of men, poverty, examples of terrible distress, and the want of the means of subsistence. Hereupon follows, we will suppose, depopulation. No man need look far for the most impressive examples of depopulation. We will imagine the number of inhabitants reduced to five hundred. What will be the consequence of this? The area and the soil were fully competent to subsist twice that number. Strips and acres of land now seem to call loudly for the hand of the cultivator. The whole country pines and is sick for the plowshare and the spade. Nothing therefore is more evident, upon Mr. Malthus's scheme, than that this region will speedily recover its lost population. Want of the means of subsistence put it down: that want being removed, the principle of increase inherent in the human species will raise it up again.
But is this really the case in the history of the earth? Let us look through all the depopulated countries enumerated by Montesquieu. They have been amply blessed in the remedy prescribed by Mr. Malthus, the reduction of the numbers of those who cried out for the means of subsistence. Why are they at present unconscious of their happiness, and why do they not diligently apply themselves to increase their numbers? I think I may venture to say that in no one instance has the thing happened as Mr. Malthus's theory requires. Wherever depopulation has once set up its standard, the evil goes on. In these countries we do not find, as according to the dicta of the Essay on Population we ought to find, a periodical flux and reflux of the number of their inhabitants,d an elasticity by means of which, as soon as the pressure had operated to a certain point, the principle resumes its sway, and the energies mount again. On the contrary, wherever depopulation has operated to a great extent, and for a considerable length of time, I believe we shall never find the country resuming its preceding prosperity and populousness, unless by an actual planting and settling of a new race of inhabitants within its limits.
Hence it appears, that it is something else, and not merely or principally a rise and fall in the means that nature affords us for obtaining provisions and subsistence, that limits the population of a country, and causes that country in many instances to produce so much smaller a proportion of human beings, than it could boast in some preceding generation, or in some remote age of the world.
I would observe by the way, that a want of the means of subsistence, and a want of the means which nature affords to man for obtaining provisions and subsistence, are by no means synonymous. Much of Mr. Malthus's strength lies in his ambiguities. When the whole earth has been "cultivated like a garden,"e we will suppose for a moment that this state of things puts a bar on the multiplication of mankind. But it is a very different question, and is well worthy of the inquiry of the political economist, Why Turkey in Europe, Turkey in Asia, Persia, Egypt, and a multitude of other countries, are so thinly inhabited now, to what they were in the renowned periods of their ancient history. Certainly it is not because their soil is exhausted. Certainly it is not because another blade of corn refuses to grow on their surface. We may venture, even in the infancy of the inquiry, to assert, that the cause is to be found in the government and political administration of these countries. If a beneficent sovereign, the father of his people, were to arise among them, if a great genius, who loved his fellow-men, and in whom the ardor of his love generated enlightened attention, and fertilized the field of intellectual resources, were to mount the throne, if such a one were to apply all his energies to make his country what it formerly was, when it seemed to be the granary of the world, we may reasonably believe that his labors would not be in vain. The great mass of the people in that country would no longer be oppressed. Their sovereign, and inspired by him a long train of men in power inferior to the throne, would make it their ambition, that each father of a family who desired it, should have a portion of land subject to his own providence and discretion, and should possess the means of rendering the land he owned available to the purposes of human prosperity. The energies of the inhabitants of the country would be called forth, and men from the other regions would be invited to settle on this advantageous soil. Hence it appears, that it is ill government, and not a want of the means of subsistence, that renders these countries a permanent scene of desolation.
But Mr. Malthus, that dark and terrible genius that is ever at hand to blast all the hopes of all mankind, will tell us, that Egypt, or whatever other territory we take for our example, will one day be "cultivated like a garden," and will refuse itself to any further increase of inhabitants. Be it so: we will not dispute that for the present. But is that any reason why, out of a generous care for a distant posterity, we should refuse the vast accession of happiness that shall be offered to us? "Take the good the Gods provide thee." I am disposed, like Mr. Malthus, to say, "An event at such a distance," as that of a whole country, or the whole earth, having more inhabitants than its soil will maintain, "may fairly be left to Providence."f We have disarmed the Essay on Population of all its sting, when we have proved that, "at every period during the progress of cultivation, the distress for want of food will [not] be constantly pressing on all mankind," or, in other words, that the population of Europe, and the other parts of the Old World, is not necessarily "always pressing hard against the limits of the means of subsistence."
c Vol. II. p. 269.
d This remark perhaps stands in need of explanation. I acknowledge a flux and reflux in the population of countries, as, for example, in Sweden. But I affirm that there is no instance of a country abundantly peopled, then reduced in its numbers through a scarcity of the means of subsistence and afterwards from the depths of depopulation becoming populous again purely because the superabundance of its citizens was taken away.
e Essay on Population, Vol. II, p. 220.
f Vol.II, p. 220.
• Book 3, Chapter 02 : Of Deaths and the Rate of Human Mortality
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It is the glory of modern philosophy to have banished the doctrine of occult causes. Superstition and a blind deference to great names taught men that there were questions upon which we must not allow ourselves to enter with a free spirit of research. In science, as well as religion, we were told there was a sanctuary into which it would be profaneness for ordinary and unpriveleged men to intrude. The avroc eøn of the master, was the authority upon which we were directed to repose ourselves: and occult causes were assigned, a sort of sacred names that could not be defined, the operation of which was every where to be recognized, and upon no occasion to be subjected to investigation.
Lord Bacon was the mighty genius to whom we are principally indebted for the destruction of this fortress. He has taught us fearlessly to bring all nature to the tribunal of science, and to submit all her operations and phenomena to the test of experiment. The path he pointed out has since been indefatigably pursued by the
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intellect of two successive centuries, and memorable is the progress that has been made.
The Essay on Population is an attempt to revive, in a particular case, that system of theorizing which Lord Bacon had so successfully exploded. Vise and misery are Mr. Malthus's cabalistical terms; and he has treated us here, exactly as he has done in the question of the geometrical ratio. The whole of what he says on the matter is in reality comprehended in one dogmatic proposition, consisting of a subject, a predicate, and a copula — no more — which whoever will may believe, and whoever will may disbelieve; but which no man can reasonably either believe or disbelieve, without a body of evidence, such as Mr. Malthus has not attempted to produce.
If the population of the United States of North America has doubled itself every twenty-five years, and that by procreation only, Mr. Malthus should have shewn us how that procreation proceeded. He should have divided the number of children which his proposition required, to each wedded pair, their parents, should have first laid down how many children to a marriage were necessary to his hypothesis, and then have proved that that proportion of children was the actual produce of the United States. Mr. Malthus is said to be an expert mathematician: it would then have been an easy task for him, first, to have gone through, and next to have exhibited, this process.
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In the same summary and oracular manner in which he delivers his doctrine of the geometrical ratio, he next introduces to our notice vise and misery, imaginary causes by which he wishes us to account for his imaginary effects. [I do not mean that vise and misery have no existence; but I affirm that they are gratuitously assumed as causes of a given degree of energy, exactly commensurate to the producing a given effect, to wit, the suspension of the original law of the multiplication of mankind.] In other words, the human species, according to him, ought to double itself four times in a century: but, in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, this is found not to be the case: therefore vise and misery must be the bars that are continually suppressing this progress. Vise and misery are good set terms: but one would think that a man must be desperately in love with them, who would give them credit for such stupendous effects, without allowing himself time for a little severe examination.
Here, as in the former case, the application of Mr. Malthus's attainments in mathematics is a main desideratum. He should have shewn us in what manner, and at what age, vise and misery destroyed the children that were born: for it must be as children that they are destroyed, since if they arrived at puberty, they might be the causes of an increased population in a following age, and if they continued to exist only ten
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or fifteen years, they would consume that quantity of food, which Mr. Malthus says is impossible to be supplied. He should have chosen some country or some district of the earth for the subject of his experiment, and have brought forward in Arabic numerals the victims of vise and misery, as they fell in from year to year.
It happens however, most unfortunately for Mr. Malthus's hypothesis, that the subject of human mortality is not a new subject. The avidity of mankind, the assiduous spirit of pecuniary calculation, and the desire inherent in the minds of the masters of families to make some provision for those who shall survive them, have gone a great way towards reducing this to a science, without the smallest idea on the part of those who cultivated it, that their proceeding was calculated to throw any light upon the moral government of the world.
Even before Dr. Price, and the other writers on annuities and reversionary payments, published their lucubrations, enough had been done to place in the clearest light that question, which Mr. Malthus has sought to involve in more than Egyptian darkness. The author of the Essay on Population should have taken down Dr. Birch's Collection of the Yearly Bills of Mortality, and have extracted from thence a series of Tables of the victims of vise and misery. If, in addition to this, he had procured and published Bills of Mortality for any of the most favored
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districts of the United States, we should have seen with a glance of the eye to what extent vise and misery prevail more in Europe than in North America (for such is the whole question) to destroy the infant offspring of the human species.
This was a proper topic to be submitted to the decision of figures. Here, as in the question of the geometrical ratio, all should have been subordinate to the exhibition of actual facts. In the inquiry respecting procreation, the author should not have confined himself to bare enumerations, but should have shewn how his immense augmentations of the species were procreated. In like manner, in the destruction of the young of mankind afterwards, it would by no means have been attended with insuperable difficulty, to have put down in columns the numbers destroyed from year to year; and I cannot understand how any man can reasonably acquiesce in Mr. Malthus's enormous and atrocious assertions, without having first looked upon the subject from this point of view. The author has chosen for the field of his wild and disorderly dicta a topic, which beyond almost any that can be named is capable of mechanical exactness. The whole question as to his vise and misery, their terrible effects in old countries, and the suspension and neutralizing of those effects in new,reduces itself to this, in what numbers do human beings die, and when do they die?
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Mr. Malthus says, "The proportion of births to marriages forms no criterion by which to judge of the increase of mankind."a But this is the grossest mistake that was ever made, by any person aspiring to proceed, as the author of the Essay on Population pretends to do, upon the principles of pure reason. There can assuredly be no other substantial and permanent increase of the human race, than the fruitfulness of marriages, or, to speak more accurately, of women capable of child-bearing.
In countries, where the forms of civilized life prevail, where men enjoy a moderate degree of security for person and property, and are unvisited by any overwhelming calamity, all the children or nearly all the children, are born, that the structure and frame of human nature can fairly lead us to expect:
In this we have Mr. Malthus completely with us. He says, "The passion between the sexes is necessary, and will always remain nearly in its present state."b He adds, "The principle of moral restraint has undoubtedly in past ages operated with very inconsiderable force, nor can we reasonably expect any future improvement, in which we are not borne out by the experience of the past."c
But we do not want the aid of Mr. Malthus, and his gross and degrading ideas of human
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nature, to establish our position. We have just seen that in many countries at least, Sweden and England for example, almost all the women marry, and that the marriages are sufficiently early to give us every reasonable chance of a numerous offspring.
When once therefore we have ascertained the fair proportion of births to marriages in any community, we have a just criterion by which to judge of the increase or otherwise of mankind in that community. Children in Europe are not smuggled out of the world, as Mr. Malthus's theory would require us to suppose. Give me the number of births annually or otherwise in any country; and I have the means of ascertaining, among civilized nations, how in what proportions, and at what periods, they die. There is nothing mystical in this. It is in vain that the author of the Essay on Population offers me his vise and misery, killing their millions, of whom no account is taken, and who perish we know not how. I say, an account is taken of all. I say no more perish in Europe than in the United States; and that the value and probable duration of human lives, and the chances of surviving the mischiefs that beset us in infancy and youth, are no greater there than here.
Mr. Malthus indeed reduces himself to an express contradiction in terms, when he says on the one hand, that the increase of population in the United States is "by procreation only," and
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on the other, that the number of births that a marriage shall be found to produce, is "no criterion whatever of the rate-of increase." What is procreation, but the production of a certain number, increasing or otherwise, of births to a marriage, or of births to the number of women capable of child-bearing in any community?
And, be it observed, all the calculations of Dr. Price, and all other writers upon annuities, proceed upon the negation in limine of the entire system of Mr. Malthus's book. These writers have recourse to the bills of mortality, and the reported numbers of those who die at every age, and calculate from thence the value, or probable duration of human life. If then in the United States the population doubles itself every twentyfive years by the natural force of the procreative power, while in Europe it is at a stand, and if in Europe all the children, or nearly all the children, are born, that the structure and frame of human nature can fairly lead us to expect, then it follows with the force of a demonstration, that human life is in the technical sense worth twice as much in the United States as in Europe; and that, if there are any societies for granting annuities in the United States, they must be ruined in the shortest practicable period, if, upon any given capital, they pay more than half the amount per annum, that may safely and equitably be paid in this part of the world. I know no way of evading this conclusion, but by supposing
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that all this hideous excess of mortality, which distinguishes the Old World from the New, falls upon very young children, whose lives are seldom insured, and that, after having reached a certain age, human creatures die at much the same rate on one side of the globe as the other.
In the United States there must be, upon Mr. Malthus's hypothesis, only four deaths, for every eight that occur in a country in which the population is stationary.d This is as clear as any thing can be imagined to be. At what period of life do these deaths occur? To keep down the population effectually, it ought all to be of children. The death of a child, to speak in the spirit of Mr. Malthus's system, is worth five times, nay, I know not how many times, a death occurring at a later period. And indeed it is obvious all through, that Mr. Malthus trusts to the destruction of infants and young children, as the sheet-anchor of our hope to preserve the population of Europe from perishing with hunger. Surely, of all creeds that were ever greedily and unscrupulously received, this requires
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the greatest portion of faith, that twice as many, or, to speak more accurately, three or four times as many, young children perish through the direct operation of vise and misery in the most virtuous and happy countries of Europe, as perish through the operation of all causes taken together, in the United States of North America!
The theory of the Essay on Population poorly and precariously subsists upon two points, 1. That more human creatures are born from a given population in the United States than any where else. 2. That fewer human creatures die there, in a given population, or within a limited period. Mr. Malthus knows nothing of either. He has not dreamed of exerting any industry or inquiry about either. He has looked with a supercilious and hasty glance at the bare numbers placed on the territory of the United States, and has not thought of ruminating any further. He has talked about death, because death is the forked arrow with which vise and misery, according to him, consummate their purposes. And he talks about births, because the reading part of the public has not yet arrived at the perfection of believing in all cases, without requiring the exhibition of something that shall pass with them for a reason. But he has not even attempted to fix any thing specific, as to either the births or deaths of America. And with this unconcocted system, this abortive
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birth, this bear's whelp never licked into form, this hypothesis, which like the incomprehensible author of nature, dwells in clouds, and makes thick darkness its habitation, he has the modesty to require of us to reject every scheme that proposes to increase the sum of human happiness, to condemn all the wisest institutions that form the glory of the legislators of antiquity, and to send all philosophy to school again.
I am sensible that I leave the subject of this chapter unfinished. I am far indeed from placing an implicit reliance upon that species of records, known by the name of Registers.e I do not therefore think that much can be made of that species of argument, the favorite argument of Mr. Malthus, which consists in comparing the number of those that are stated to be born, with the number of those who appear from similar evidence to die, and thence inferring the increase or otherwise of mankind. We have seen the extraordinary conclusions that have been deduced by the editor of the Population Reports of England from the fact that no more are known to have died in 1800 than in 1780, in which period, according to him, the population had been increased by an addition of 1,215,000.f
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Here, as in every question relating to the subject, where an accurate collection of facts is required, I know of no resource to which we have access, but the Tables of Population for Sweden. In these there is presented to us a digested abstract of the numbers that die, their periods of life, and the proportions of those who die at one age to those who die at another. To these we might add from the Bills of Mortality some hints respecting the diseases, by which human beings are cut off in the different stages of existence. I might therefore have constructed a Table founded on the Swedish reports, calculated to shew that there is no such mystery and jnexplicableness in the affair as Mr. Malthus would have us suppose, but on the contrary that all goes on with a sort of regular march, in old countries, not laboring under the visitation of any singular calamity.
This Table I have not constructed. I wish to be considered as having merely sketched the subject, and left the outline to be filled up by those who come after me. All I have delivered on this head is new. No one has attempted before me by actual and patient investigation to ascertain any thing in the way of principle respecting the increase or decrease of the numbers of mankind. I claim nothing more than to have endeavored to disenchant my fellow-men (I hope successfully endeavored) from the unreal and fairy edifice in which Mr. Malthus had
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sought to enclose them, and to have brought together some of the materials for erecting a fabric, which hurricanes cannot demolish, nor floods destroy.
aVol. II, p. 159
bSee above, p.31.
cP 32.
d In the United States a given number of children die, and yet the population is doubled every generation. If at many children in proportion are born in China or any other country where the population is at a stand, as in the United States, it is clear that not only that number of children must die, but another number in addition, equal to the number of children that die in the United States, added to the number of mature persons that might be found necessary barely to keep up the race. See above, p. 50.
e "Perhaps we ought to except from this censure the Registers of Sweden, where so much enlightened attention seems to have been bestowed on all the questions connected with population.
f See above, p. 226.
• Book 3, Chapter 03 : Attempt towards a Rational Theory of the Checks on Population
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SCARCELY any thing can be imagined more likely to supply us with just views respecting the past history of population, and of consequence to suggest to us sound anticipations as to its future progress, than the comparing some tract of country and period of time in which its increase appears to have gone on with highest vigor and health on the one hand, with all that is known, as to its general aspect over the face of the earth, on the other.
Mr. Malthus has had recourse to certain wild conjectures and gratuitous assertions respecting the United States of North America, concerning whose population, and the effect of the power of procreation among them, I may safely affirm nothing is known, and has here taken his stand, for the purpose of issuing his dogmatic speculations. Upon this ground he erects his monstrous proposition, that "the population of the earth, wherever it is unchecked, will go on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or will increase in a geometrical ratio." Hence he sets
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out on the hopeful task, the main business of all his pages, of showing why this proposition of his has never been realized, or, I may rather say, why no approach has ever been made to it, in any settled country throughout the annals of the world.
I have chosen a different standard from that of Mr. Mai thus. I have found that a very exemplary and elaborate account has been taken of the population of Sweden, in all those points most calculated to afford knowledge on the subject, for more than half a century. Here I grasp something real, and by which I can hardly fear to be misled. Here I find that the population of this division of Europe has gone on for fifty-Tour years, at a rate which, if in reality this subject would admit of any precise or mathematical measurement, would seem to promise a doubling in something more than one hundred years. The question therefore that is left me, is to consider why, in no country of the earth, the progress of population has advanced at this rate, perhaps for a single century- or, to take the question upon a larger scale, and where our evidence is more satisfactory, why the population of the earth, collectively taken, has experienced no increase, from the earliest records of authentic profane history to the present hour.
It is by looking at the subject in a comprehensive view, that I think we shall stand the best
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chance of attaining some sound principles concerning it.
For this purpose it may perhaps be worth while to direct our reflections to two points.
First, there are certain countries, which were once in an eminent degree populous and flourishing, that are now sunk into a state of comparative solitude and desolation. Such are Syria, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Sicily, that part of Asia which in ancient times was subject to the Great King, and the whole coast of Africa bordering on the Mediterranean. To these we may add the extensive empires of Mexico and Peru in the New World, together with the islands of the American Archipelago. What has reduced them to their present state of desolation?
Secondly, we may turn our attention to those countries, which for centuries past have not been subject to such violent convulsions, the countries which form what may be called the commonwealth of Europe, particularly England, Germany and France. Our thoughts will not then be of desolation, of vast and fruitful provinces rendered naked of inhabitants, but they will be turned to an inquiry not less interesting and useful, why, in none of these countries, population has advanced with that steady and uniform progress, of which, when regarded in the abstract, it seems to be capable?
Population, if we consider it historically, appears to be a fitful principle, operating
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intermittedly and by starts. This is the great mystery of the subject; and patiently to investigate the causes of its irregular progress seems to be a business highly worthy of the philosopher.
One of the first ideas that will occur to a reflecting mind is, that the cause of these irregularities cannot be itself of regular and uniform operation. It cannot be "the numbers of man. kind at all times pressing hard against the limits of the means of subsistence."
Let us first look.at those causes which may obviously account for a great and sudden diminution of the numbers of mankind. Those which are in every one's recollection, "familiar in our mouths as household words," are war, pestilence and famine. But there are other causes, more powerful and tremendous in their operation than war, pestilence and famine, at least than those calamities in their more ordinary and softened visitations. These are conquest, such as we find it recorded in certain periods of the history of mankind, and bad government, when carried to a certain degree of corruption and oppression. I say bad government, in the teeth of one of Mr. Malthus's most extravagant paradoxes, where he lays it down that "Human institutions, however they may appear to be the causes of much mischief to society, are in reality light and superficial, mere feathers that float on the surface, in comparison with those deeper
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seated causes of evil, which result from the laws of nature and the passions of man."a
The truths I have here delivered, have in reality no novelty in them, but have been dwelt upon by every former political writer who has had much at heart the welfare and happiness of mankind. But there are truths, however obvious, that need to be from time to time revived in the minds of men. Human memory is a repository of so uncertain a tenacity, that the most important principles, the great land-marks of political and moral science, if not occasionally brought to our recollection, are in danger of being let go and forgotten.
I will produce therefore one specimen of the nature of conquest from the writings of Mr. Burke. I might have found as striking examples in fifty other authors, ancient and modern; but there is something in his language that enshrines truth, and imparts to it the immortality of the genius by which it is recorded.
"He drew," says he, speaking of the invasion of Hyder Ali in the Carnatic, "from every quarter, whatever a savage ferocity could add to his new rudiments in the arts of destruction; and compounding all the materials of fury, havoc and desolation, into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of the mountains.
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While the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor which blackened all their horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatic. Then ensued a scene of woe, the like of which no eye had seen, no heart conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants flying from their flaming villages, in part were slaughtered; others, without regard to sex, to age, to the respect of rank, or sacredness of function; fathers torn from children, husbands from wives, enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry, and amid the goading spears of drivers, and the trampling of pursuing horses, were swept into captivity in an unknown and hostile land. Those who were able to evade this tempest, fled to the walled cities. But escaping from fire, sword and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine."b
But, lest the exaggeration of the orator in this passage should be suspected, I will subjoin an extract from the authentic pen of the phlegmatic Gibbon.
"In all their invasions of the civilized empires of the South, the Scythian shepherds have been uniformly actuated by a savage and destructive
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spirit. The laws of war, that restrain the exercise of national rapine and murder, are founded on two principles of substantial interest; the knowledge of the permanent benefits which may be obtained by a moderate use of conquest; and a just apprehension, lest the desolation which we inflict on the enemy's country, may be retaliated on our own. But these considerations of hope and fear are almost unknown in the pastoral state of nations. After the Moguls had subdued the northern provinces of China, it was seriously proposed, not in the hour of victory and passion, but in calm and deliberate council, to exterminate all the inhabitants of that populous country, that the vacant 'land might be converted to the pasture of cattle. The firmness of a Chinese mandarin, who insinuated some principles of rational policy into the mind of Zingis, diverted him from the execution of this horrid design. But in the cities of Asia, which yielded to the Moguls, the inhuman abuse of the rights of war was exercised with a regular form -of discipline. Such was the behavior of the conquerors, when they were not conscious of any extraordinary rigor. But the most casual provocation, the slightest motive of caprice or convenience, often provoked them to involve a whole people in indiscriminate massacre: and the ruin of some flourishing cities was executed with such unrelenting perseverance, that, according to their own expression, horses might run, without stumbling,
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over the ground where they had once stood. The three great capitals of Khorasan, Mam, Nisabour and Herat, were destroyed by the armies of Zingis; and the exact account which was taken of the slain, amounted to four millions three hundred and forty-seven thousand persons. Timur, or Tamerlane, was educated in a less barbarous age, and in the profession of the Mahometan religion; yet, if Attila equaled the hostile ravages of Tamerlane, either the Hun or the Tartar might deserve the epithet of the Scourge of God. Cherefeddin AH, the servile panegyrist of the latter, would afford us many horrid examples. In his camp before Delhi, Timur massacred 100,000 Indian prisoners, who had smiled when the army of their countrymen appeared in sight. The people of Ispahan supplied 70,000 human sculls for the structure of several lofty towers; and a similar tax was levied on the revolt of Baghdad."c
These are a few of the most memorable examples of the achievements of savage conquerors. But we must not suppose that the desolation produced by conquests was confined to such as these. Cesar, the elegant and accomplished Cesar, whose humanity has furnished a topic to so many panegyrists, is computed to have conquered three hundred nations, taken eight hundred cities, and to have defeated three millions
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of men, one million of which was left dead on the field of battle. "Observe," exclaims Gibbon,d "with how much indifference Cesar relates in his Commentaries of the Gallic war, that he put to death the senate of the Veneti who had yielded lo his mercy (iii, 16); that he labored to extirpate the whole nation of the Eburones (vi, 31); and that forty thousand persons were massacred at Bourges, by the just revenge of his soldiers who spared neither age nor sex (vii, 27)."
The expressive style of Tacitus sums up the whole of this subject in a very few words. "Proximus dies Jaciem xrictorice latins aperuit. Vastum ubique silentium, secreti colles,fumantia procvl tecta, nemo exploratoribus obvius."e
How often has this scene been acted over on the face of the earth? It was thus that *"Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees* excellency, became as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch his tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their fold there: but wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there: and the wild
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beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant places."f
Surely all this is not "light and superficial, mere feathers hat float on the surface of human affairs, in comparison with the evils which result from the laws of nature," and what Mr. Malthus deprecates by the name of" the passion between the sexes."
The next source of depopulation which I have mentioned is bad government. It is not consistent with the object of this inquiry, to exhibit any of the subjects of which it treats, under false colors. I have therefore said bad government; I have not said despotism. Despotism is worthy of our fixed reprobation;" but there have been despotisms so conducted, at least for a time, as not to produce the effects of depopulation. On the contrary, the nations among which they prevailed, have appeared prosperous and flourishing.
I will confine myself under this head to a single example, which shall be taken from the work of Mr. Malthus.
"The fundamental cause of the low state of population in Turkey, compared with its extent of territory, is undoubtedly the nature of the government. Its tyranny, its feebleness, its bad laws and worse administration of them, together with the consequent insecurity of
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property, throw such obstacles in the way of agriculture, that the means of subsistence are necessarily decreasing yearly, and with them, of course, the number of people. The miii, or general land-tax paid to the sultan, is in itself moderate; but by abuses inherent in the Turkish government, the pachas and their agents have found out the means of rendering it ruinous. Though they cannot absolutely alter the impost which has been established by the sultan, they have introduced a multitude of changes, which without the name produce all the effects of an augmentation. In Syria, according to Volney, having the greatest part of the land at their disposal, they clog their concessions [lettings, a* admissions to tenantry] with burdensome conditions, and exact the half, and sometimes even two-thirds, of the crop. When the harvest is over, they cavil about losses, and as they have the power in their hands, they carry off what they think proper. If the season fail, they still exact the same sum, and expose every thing that the poor_ peasant possesses to sale. To these constant oppressions are added a thousand accidental extortions. Sometimes a whole village is laid under contribution for some real or imaginary offense. Arbitrary presents are exacted on the accession of each governor; grass, barley and straw are demanded for his horses; and commissions are multiplied, that the soldiers who carry the orders may live upon the starving
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peasants whom they treat with the most brutal insolence and injustice.
"The consequence of these depredations is that the poorer classes of inhabitants, ruined, and unable any longer to pay the miri, become a burden to the village, or fly into the cities; but the miri is unalterable, and the sum to be levied must be found somewhere. The portion of those who are thus driven from their homes falls on the remaining inhabitants, whose burden, though at first light, now becomes insupportable. If they should be visited by two years of drought and famine the whole village is ruined and abandoned; and the tax which it should have paid, is levied on the neighboring lands.
"The same mode of proceeding takes place with regard to the tax on the Christians which has been raised by these means from three, five, and eleven piasters, at which it was first fixed, to thirty-five and forty, which absolutely impoverishes those on whom it is levied, and obliges them to leave the country. It has been remarked that these exactions have made a rapid progress during the last forty years; from which time are dated the decline of agriculture, the depopulation of the country and the diminution in the quantity of specie carried into Constantinople.
"The food of the peasants is almost every where reduced to a little flat cake of barley or dora, onions, lentils and water. Not to lose
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any part of their corn, they leave in it all sorts of wild grain, which often produce bad consequences. In the mountains of Lebanon and Nablous, in time of dearth, they gather the acorns from the oaks, which they eat after boiling or roasting them on the ashes.
"By a natural consequence of this misery, the art of cultivation is in the most deplorable state. The husbandman is almost without instruments, and those he has are very bad. His plow is frequently no more than the branch of a tree cut below a fork, and used without wheels. The ground is tilled by asses and cows, rarely by oxen, which would bespeak too much riches. In the districts exposed to the Arabs, as in Palestine, the countryman must sow with his musket in his hand; and scarcely does the corn turn yellow, before it is reaped, and concealed in subterraneous caverns. As little as possible is employed for seed-corn, because the peasants sow no more than is barely necessary for their subsistence. Their whole industry is limited to a supply of their immediate wants; and to procure a little bread, a few onions, a blue shirt, and a bit of wool, much labor is not necessary. The peasant lives therefore in distress; but at least he does not enrich his tyrants, and the avarice of despotism is its own punishment.
"This picture, which is drawn by Volney, in describing the state of the peasants in Syria, seems to be confirmed by all other travelers in
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these countries; and, according to Eton, it represents very nearly the condition of the peasants in the greatest part of the Turkish tdominions. Universally, the offices of every denomination are set up to public sale; and in the intrigues of the seraglio, by which the disposal of all places is regulated, every thing is done by means of bribes. The pachas, in consequence, who are sent into the provinces, exert to the utmost their power of extortion; but are always outdone by the officers immediately below them, who, in their turn, leave room for their subordinate agents.
"The pacha must raise money to pay the tribute, and also to indemnify himself for the purchase of his office, support his dignity, and make a provision in case of accidents; and as all power, both military and civil, centers in his person from his representing the sultan, the means are at his discretion, and the quickest are invariably considered as the best. Uncertain of to-morrow, he treats his province as a mere transient possession, and endeavors to reap, if possible, in one day the fruit of many years, without the smallest regard to his successor, or the injury that he may do to the permanent revenue.
"The cultivator is necessarily more exposed to these extortions than the inhabitant of the towns. From the nature of his employment, he is fixed to one spot, and the productions of agriculture do not admit of being easily concealed.
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The tenure of the land and the rights of succession are besides uncertain. When a father dies, the inheritance reverts to the sultan, and the children can only redeem the succession by a considerable sum of money. These considerations naturally occasion an indifference to landed estates. The country is deserted; and each person is desirous of flying to the towns, where he will not only in general meet with better treatment, but may hope to acquire a species of wealth which he can more easily conceal from the eyes of his rapacious masters.
"To complete the ruin of agriculture, a maximum is in many cases established, and the peasants are obliged to furnish the towns with corn at a fixed price. It is a maxim of Turkish policy, originating in the feebleness of the government and the fear of popular tumults, to keep the price of corn low in all the considerable towns. In the case of a failure in the harvest, every person who possesses any corn is obliged to sell it at the price fixed under pain of death; and if there be none in the neighborhood, other districts are ransacked for it. When Constantinople is in want of provisions, ten provinces are perhaps famished for a supply. At Damascus, during the scarcity in 1784, the people paid only one penny farthing a pound for their bread, while the peasants in the villages were absolutely dying with hunger. —
"The effect of such a system of government
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on agriculture need not be insisted upon. The causes of the decreasing means of subsistence are but too obvious; and the checks, which keep the population down to the level of these decreasing resources, may be traced with nearly equal certainty, and will appear to include almost every species of vise and misery that is known."g
I shall wind up these extracts with repeating Mr. Malthus's remark, that "Human institutions, however they may appear to be the causes of much mischief to society, are in reality light and superficial, mere feathers that float the surface, in comparison with those deeper-seated causes of evil, which result from the laws of nature, and the passion between the sexes."
The theories of the Essay on Population have owed a very great portion of their success in the world, to the ambiguity of the terms employed in it. The multiplication of the human species has been checked and counteracted "by vise and misery." Who denies it? Yes, conquest is vise. Yes, bad government is vise. And, if these had been exiled from the face of the earth, we may reasonably believe that the human species and the globe on which we dwell would have worn a very different appearance from that which they actually present.
Having thus gained admission for his favorite
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terms, the author of the Essay on Population immediately proceeds to put the change upon us.
First he affirms, that the increase of mankind, at least in old settled countries, is subject to an uniform and ever-active check. This we have no reason to believe; unless by a check we are to understand the uncertain tenure of human life, and the inevitable law under which we are placed, All men must die. In any other sense it is expressly contrary to the fact.
Secondly he finds, that, in the most memorable instances in which the multiplication of mankind is counteracted, there is generally great vise, and always much misery.
Having set up these two propositions, he bends them towards each other, that upon them he may repose a theory. The increase of mankind is subject to an uniform and ever active check [so says Mr. Malthus]: the known and most notorious checks upon population are vise and misery: therefore vise and misery are incessantly at work to prevent the multiplication of mankind: therefore vise and misery are indispensable ingredients in the permanent composition of the body politic. The ground of his theory is a gratuitous assumption; and, finding that there must be a check where there is none, he precariously compounds it of the best materials that offer themselves to his hand. He shows a very shadowy and inadequate foundation
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for his first proposition, the geometrical ratio. He shows none at all for his second, by which the stupendous multiplication of mankind by a doubling every twenty-five years is reduced at once, through the instrumentality of vise and misery, to a stand; but requires us to believe it, simply because (as he says) it must be so.
aEssay on Population, First Edition, p., 177. Fifth Edition, Vol. II, p. 246.
bSpeech o the Debts of the Nabob of Arcot.
cDecline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chap. XXXIV.
dIbid. Chap. XXVI, note 99.
eAgricolæ Vita, cap. 38.
fIsaiah, Chap. XIII.
gEssay on Population, Vol. I, p. 255 to 263.
• Book 3, Chapter 04 : Attempt towards a Rational Theory of the Checks on Population Continued
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THUS far I have been considering those checks on population, which operate with an outstretched power, and have in various instances turned great cities and flourishing countries into a desert. I proceed now to consider those regions, such as England, Germany and France, which for centuries past have not been subject to such violent convulsions.
What we appear to have most reason to believe under this latter head, is, that these countries, like Sweden, have from time to time gone on for a certain period increasing their population in a steady and moderate degree, and that then certain events have occurred, which have arrested this progress, and even reduced the population considerably below the standard to which it had lately attained. For instance, I will set it down, that we have no very certain reason to believe that England contains a greater number of inhabitants now, than it did in 1339, when Edward the Third commenced his expedition for the conquest of France.
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That the hypothesis just delivered, viz. that civilized countries, in possession of a reasonable degree of prosperity, have from time to time gone on for a certain period increasing their population in a steady and moderate degree, and that then certain events have occurred, which have arrested this progress, and even reduced the population considerably below the standard to which it had lately attained,—that this hypothesis, I say, is true, may be very strongly presumed from the example of Sweden.
To illustrate this, I will repeat here a Table which has already been laid before the reader in an earlier page of this volume.
The population of Sweden in 1805, as appears from the actual enumeration, amounted to 3,320,647.
Now let us suppose the population to have doubled in one hundred years, and let us take the half of this number as the sum of the Swedish people in 1705 ——————1,660,323
By the same rule the population will be:
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So that by this way of calculation Sweden contained, at the time of the destruction of the Western Empire in 476, little more than three hundred souls, and, when this part of the globe began to send forth its hordes, which destroyed the power of the Romans, and changed the face of the world, it could scarcely boast a human inhabitant. There needs no argument, I presume, to prove that this is not the fact.
The progress of population indeed may be illustrated both ways, in its increase and in its decline, from the example of Sweden. In the year 1751, the precise period from which my accounts of the numbers of the Swedish nation commence, Adolphus Frederic of Holstein Gottorp, bishop of Lubeck, succeeded to the throne. He reigned during a period of twenty years, and was succeeded by his son, Gustavus III, who was assassinated by Ankarstroem in 1792. This event however occasioned little disturbance in the affairs of the nation: Gustavus III. was replaced in the government by his son, Gustavus IV, who reigned till 1809. Europe, during this period, was plagued with the war of 1756, the American war, and the wars which arose out of the French Revolution; but Sweden sustained less disturbance from these causes, than almost any other European state. The whole
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period was to her for the most part a period of tranquility; and accordingly we see a perpetual increase in the number of her inhabitants.
The close of the reign of Gustavus IV. was on the other hand eminently disastrous; and we accordingly find it attended with corresponding effects. Not only Finland became lost to the Swedish crown, the population of which, by the returns of 1805, amounted to 895,773 souls but, beside this reduction, the enumeration for the rest of the kingdom in 1810, instead of increasing, fell short by 47,000 and upwards, of the enumeration in 1805.a From that period however the government was committed to the hands of Bernadotte, now Charles XIV, by whom the affairs of Sweden appear to have been conducted with some degree of prudence and moderation; and accordingly we find, by the return for 1815, that the population is again upon the rise. Norway by a late treaty has been added to the Swedish dominions; but the inhabitants of that country, amounting to about a million, are not included in the enumeration.
But 1 return to the question of population as it relates to my native country.
Now I say that the causes, which have kept down the population of the British Isles, and may, for aught we know, have prevented
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this country from arriving at a higher state of population at the present hour than it exhibited five centuries ago, may be principally reduced to these three, war, pestilence and famine, with the further addition of those calamities which bear a near affinity to them, viz. periods of general or local disturbance, contagious distempers of every description, unhealthy seasons, and occasions of eminent scarcity or public distress.
The question into which I am inquiring, is why England, having gone on for some time, at various periods, I shall suppose as Sweden has done, augmenting the number of its inhabitants, has also experienced such interruptions of this augmentation, as have very probably brought back the population to what it was before, thus presenting us with the image of a journey, such as often occurs in the incoherence of dreams, in which great advances have been made, but nothing has ultimately been gained. The ground on which we tread slides from under us, and at the end of the race we find ourselves precisely on the spot at which we set out.—As, by the hypothesis, the interruptions have been occasional, the causes of those interruptions must also have been of an intermittent, not a regular operation.
All this does certainly well accord with what we know of the system of the universe. If there were not a power of increase in the numbers of
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the human species, sometimes operating, and at other times existing as a power only without present agency, the human species in all probability must have been long since extinct. If whenever famine, cruel war, or wide-wasting pestilence, had reduced the inhabitants of a country or a populous city to a mere remnant, as we frequently find to have been the case, of the population it boasted a few years or a few months before, there were no power in the constitution of man, of replacing by direct procreation with swifter or slower steps the numbers that had been swept away, it would be easy to see that every portion of the globe in its turn would have changed into a desert.—To return.
In 1339 Edward the Third led forth an army for the conquest of France. He repeated the same proceeding in 1342, and again in 1346, while at the same time queen Philippa marched against the Scots, who were defeated in a great battle, in which twenty thousand North Britons were slain, and the Scottish king and many of his nobles were taken prisoners. The expulsion of the English from France in the latter end of the reign of Edward the Third, was probably more destructive than his conquests. To these events we must add the plague of 1348, of the victims of which fifty thousand are said to have been interred in one year, in a burial-ground now the site of the Charter House,b beside
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those who died in other parts of London; this infection appears to have diffused itself impartially through every part of England.
The turbulent times of Richard the Second, the insurrection of the common people under Wat Tyler, and afterwards the contests between the king and his barons, could not have been favorable to population. The reign of Henry the Fourth was scarcely less disturbed than that of his predecessor.
Henry the Fifth acted over again the achievements of Edward the Third for the conquest of France; and these were followed by still more disastrous reverses in the reign of his son.
The series of events next brings us to the wars of York and Lancaster, upon which Hume observes:c "This fatal quarrel was not finished in less than a course of thirty years: it was signalized by twelve pitched battles: it opened a scene of extraordinary fierceness and cruelty, and is computed to have cost the lives of eighty princes of the blood, and to have almost annihilated the ancient nobility of England." What effect this had on the general population may easily be imagined. It is no less true of these wars, than of the war of Troy,
Quicquid deliranl reges, plectuntur Achivi.
The reign of the Tudors may be conceived to have been on the whole favorable to population.
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Not so the reign of the Stuarts. Charles the First never spared the blood of his people; and his conduct at length involved the nation in a civil war. The interregnum, with all its fluctuations and uncertainty of government, did not tend to increase the numbers of our countrymen; and the profligate and intolerant policy of Charles the Second could not have been beneficial to the nation.
At the Revolution commenced the system, of England making herself a principal in the wars of the continent. The long reign of George the Third has certainly had its full proportion of years of war.
Till the fire of London in 1666, Hume says,d "The plague used to break out with great fury in this metropolis twice or thrice in every century."
From the reign of Elizabeth began the system of colonization, the effects of which I shall have occasion more fully to unfold, when I come to treat expressly of the United States of North America. In the reign of George the Third we have not been contented to send out our planters to that side of the globe; we have settled an empire in the East Indies; and distributed our colonists profusely to other parts of the world.
Mr. Malthus may say what he pleases of the limited size of the earth, enabling it to subsist
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only a limited number of inhabitants, and of its population "at all times pressing hard against the limits of the means of subsistence,"—nothing in the mean while can be more palpable than the inadequate population of this island, its imperfect agriculture, and the vast tracts of its soil, which have as yet been made to contribute scarcely any thing to the subsistence of man. In short it is universally admitted that the soil of this island would maintain its present population ten times told.
Meantime I have thought it proper to enter into this slight sketch of our history as connected with the numbers of our citizens, that it might serve in some degree as a corrective to the visions of Mr. Malthus. " All this well accords with what we know of the history of population in Sweden. We know there, that it advances, and it retrogrades. It advances by slow and measured steps: and, in a country, not liable to the inroad of savage conquerors, nor to the perhaps still more destructive influences of a government framed for the misery of its subjects, absolute desolation is not to be expected. Here then we distinctly see the cheeks upon a growing population; they are matters of record; they form a distinct part of the great volume of our history. We are not left, in this (if in reality we knew nothing more of it than the Essay on Population supposes), misnamed science, to fill
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up its gaps with imaginary deaths, and still more imaginary births.
It will be seen that my question and Mr. Malthus's respecting the checks on population are altogether different. My question is, why the world, in its various climates, and its successive ages, does not produce human beings, at the rate Sweden is proved to have done for fifty four years? His question, on the contrary, is why Sweden did not for those fifty-four years produce human beings, at the rate in which he exhibits them as produced, in his dream of the United States of North America?
The entire result of the arguments and facts collected in this and the preceding Chapter, is, that the causes that keep down the population of mankind, which otherwise might advance with a slow, but regular progress, are not silent, mysterious and concealed, but obvious and glaring, and that they operate by fits and at intervals. Though I am far from pretending in this place to have reduced the theory of the checks on population into a science, I have done something towards it. I have taken it out of the state in which Mr. Malthus left it, referring every thing, as he does, to occult causes, and holding the world in awe by the repetition, at due intervals, of two cabalistical terms, vise and misery, and have shown that the real checks are palpable, recorded in the history of mankind,
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and even capable of being reduced into somewhat of a tabulated form by the persons who shall hereafter patiently study this important branch of political economy.
a I have been told by a Swede of good information that 90,000 persons perished in the disastrous campaign of 1809-10.
bStow, ad annum.
cA.D. 1455.
dAd annum.
• Book 2, Chapter 12 : Dissertation On The Ratios Of Increase In Population, And In The Means Of Subsistence, By Mr. David Booth
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SECTION I.
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS.
"It has been said," says Mr. Malthus, "that I have written a quarto volume to prove, that population increases in a geometrical, and food in an arithmetical ratio; but this is not quite true. The first of these propositions I considered as proved the moment the American increase was related, and the second proposition as soon as it was enunciated. The chief object of my work was to inquire, what effects those laws, which I considered as established in the first six pages, had produced, and were likely to produce, on society; a subject not very readily exhausted."a This, it must be acknow-
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ledged, is meeting his adversary fairly in the open field. His means of defense are displayed before us; and we shall see if his " first six pages" form an impenetrable shield.
The argument of Mr. Malthus is founded on the comparison of numerical progressions; and, as mathematical science has always been held as the only one that is demonstrably true, this comparison of numerical progressions has been hastily allowed as infallibly certain, and has obtained for its author all that implicit faith, which has been granted by his disciples to the corollaries which he has drawn.
It may be premised however, that the science of mathematics is a science of certainty, only in as far as it is a science of abstraction;—that when it ceases to be abstract, and becomes what is termed "mixed mathematics," the numbers or quantities, assume definite designations; and the reasonings thence derived are true, or false, according to the accuracy, or inaccuracy, with which these numbers or quantities are designated.—Two times two, for instance, is four, because four is the term by which we have agreed to denominate the result of this multiplication; but when, in measuring surfaces, it is said that two feet multiplied by two feet will make four feet, there is an error in the syllogism; because the word "feet" in the product, has not the same meaning that it has in the factors:—in the latter it is lineal, and in the former superficial.
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In application then, mathematical reasoning partakes of all the uncertainty of the branches of knowledge with which it is combined; and hence the numerous paradoxes which, even in this science of demonstration, have puzzled the pupils, and have scarcely been explained by their masters. These observations are not foreign to our purpose, when we have to speak of the ratio of increase in human population.
Mr. Malthus, if he himself understood" the subject, has taken it for granted that his comparison of ratios would escape the notice of mathematicians. He asserts that human population, if allowed to expand freely, would increase in a geometrical ratio, in the order of
1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, &c. Now it is obvious that this series can represent no connected chain of the expansion of human life. The quantity represented by 1 (the first term in the series) does not at any moment become 2 (the second terra), but there are an indefinite number of terms of different magnitudes to be interjected between these terms (and so between every two other successive ones) to fill up the links of the chain. This then supposes time: time therefore, the most metaphysical of all metaphysical beings, is an ingredient mixed up with the consideration of the abstract numbers of the progression. This time Mr. Malthus has specified to be 25 years. The series then
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which denotes the increase of human beings in America, is thus represented.
First term, or original propagators, 1 2d, in 25 years, 2 3d, 50 — 4 4th, 75 — 8 5th, 100 — 16 6th, 125 — 32 &c. &c. — &c.
The philosophy of Mr. Malthus thus is not the method of induction. He perpetually appeals to principles which have never been brought into action, and which are opposed to all experience. He speaks of tendencies to human increase, and of powers of population, which "in no state that we have yet known have been left to exert themselves with perfect freedom."b This is exactly in the style of those dreamers, who predict of the future something unlike and opposite to what has ever appeared in the past. They too talk of secret springs, that have never yet displayed their elasticity,—of latent energies which have never been exerted.
Latent signifies concealed, and consequently the latent power of increase in the human species is what we shall never know; but, even granting for a moment that the 3 or 4 censuses which have been taken in America do exhibit something like a duplication in 25 years;—granting too that this increase
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has arisen solely from propagation, independent of emigration, there certainly exist no data from which to infer the law of the series. We have only 4, or at most 5 terms given us,— some of them extracted at intervals of time by no means regular,—from a series perpetually flowing, and of the ebbs and floods of whose motion we know nothing; and from these the ordinary reader is presented with a picked set of numbers, in geometrical progression, with the ratio of two. From such an increasing series as the human race may be supposed to exhibit, any form of a progression may be taken :— why not that of 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, &c. which increase as the squares of the terms 1, 2. 3, 4, 5, &c.? For aught that Mr. Malthus has discovered this may be the latent law of increase. All that he has demonstrated, even granting his American censuses, as we for the moment have done, is that human beings are capable of increasing their numbers ; or, rather that they have been found to do so for a specific time: but the series which would mark the Law of that Increase, he has either been unwilling or unable to develop.
"The rate," says Mr. Malthus, " according to which the productions of the earth may be supposed to increase, it will not be easy to determine. Of this however we may be perfectly certain, that the ratio of their increase must be totally of a different nature from the ratio of the
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increase of population."c This passage is much more modest than that which we quoted at the beginning of this Dissertation, where he says, that food increases in an arithmetical ratio, and that he considered this proposition as proved the moment it was enunciated ; but, as he proceeds, this modesty vanishes, and he comes to an undoubting conclusion that food can increase only in the series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, &c. (an arithmetical progression whose ratio is one) and that the period between the terms, or time of increase, is also 25 years.
If the quantity of the food of man be increased, it is obvious that the increase will not be by starts every 25 years; but that it will be increased through many intervening times; and, consequently, even granting thai; such quantities as 1, 2, 3, 4, &c. were extracted from the flow of increase, at certain periods, the arithmetical progression thus exhibited would be a picked set of numbers, (as we stated respecting population) and might have been any other series rather than that which Mr. Malthus has chosen, for aught that experience has told him on the subject. The successive terms of all increasing series whatever present nothing but additions. The mathematician forms series at his own pleasure, where the additions are regulated by certain laws. It is not so with those of Nature.
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Whether her series alternately progress and retrograde ;—whether they circulate, or decrease, or flow in straight and eternal lines, is beyond the ken of the philosopher. He snatches at intervals, a few links in the immeasurable and ever moving chain of the universe; and dividing these links into such portions as are perceived by the glance of a moment, he cries out in extacy, " I have found it!" This remark however is general. It refers to the boundaries of human knowledge, and is applicable to a Newton as well as to a Malthus:—Our business is with the latter.
Taking the series 1, 2, 3, 4, &c. as that of the increase of human subsistence, or of any thing Ase, we may, by picking the terms, extract from it any progression we chuse: for instance, in — 1,2,3, 4,5, 6, 7, 8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,10, &c. the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 8th, and 16th terms, form the precise geometrical progression, which Mr. Malthus has chosen to represent the increase of human beings. The progressions themselves then would have signified nothing, had not Mr. Malthus assumed the principle, that an equal period of time, 25 years, was to elapse between the production of every subsequent term of either progression. Thus arranged:
Population, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256
Food, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
he believes that he has demonstrated that in 8 periods of time of 25 years each, the population
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if unchecked, would increase to 256 times its present number, while the food would only be 9 times what it now is. Let us endeavor to view the grounds on which these different progressions have been raised.
SECTION II.
OF THE RATIO OF INCREASE IN THE MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE.
The phrase, "means of subsistence," as applied to human beings is in the utmost degree loose and indefinite. In a general sense almost every thing that grows, walks, swims, or flies, is capable of being converted into the food of man, and hence every vegetable and every animal must cease to exist, before it can be said that his means of subsistence are exhausted; and, till then, the grown up man would always find sufficient to feed his young. In a particular view however, it may be, and often is otherwise. Man in society is a being of habits and prejudices He is moreover a slave. His food must be of a certain kind, dressed in a certain manner, and provided, not by the whole, but by a small portion of the species. In this situation a famine may occur while the world teems with animal
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and vegetable life.d He may starve in a workshop, as well as within the walls of a dungeon; because, in neither case, has he any food except what is brought by his keepers. It is food so prepared and so distributed, which constitutes the means of subsistence among the nations of Europe, where the laborer
"Starves, in the midst of Nature's bounty curst,
And in the loaden vineyard, dies for thirst."
As it is in America that Mr. Malthus has discovered his ratio of propagation, it is there also we should look for the ratio of increased subsistence; and in doing so we shall find reason to be astonished at his choice of an arithmetical one. As far as animals constitute the food of man, its increase must be in the same sort of series as that of human beings : and, if a geometrical ratio exist any where, it is surely in the vegetable produce of the soil. Animals and vegetables multiply as rapidly at least as man, if submitted to his care and protection: and, as the love of his offspring is implanted in his nature, he would, if free, always exert himself to rear the food, which his children might require. The limits of this production of food would not be discovered, as long as any land lay waste. Until the whole were cultivated in the highest degree,—until the sea were drained of its inhabitants, and no wild beast or fowl were found upon the earth,
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the food of man would always increase in an equal ratio with the human race.e If America have doubled its inhabitants every 25 years, the prepared food must have increased in equal proportion : for all the inhabitants have plenty, and are able to export grain to foreign countries. In the only country then, where Mr. Malthus has discovered any ratio of increase of human population, the same, if not a greater ratio has been observed in the increase of the means of subsistence. As before observed, natural subsistence is indefinite, and prepared subsistence, which is a manufacture from what nature has in store, must always increase in quantity in proportion to the number of manufacturers employed, until the raw material can no longer be furnished ; and so long at least the ratios of human increase and of the means of subsistence must necessarily be the same. What will happen when the prolific power of man shall enable him to outstrip the fertility of the globe which he inhabits: when the head of the serpent shall bite off its tail, and no longer remain an emblem
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of the universe, we leave to the conjectures of those whose imaginations are able to people the universe with human beings.f Meantime, whether vise, misery, or (what Mr. Malthus never chooses to mention) the less extent of prolific power, and the shortness of time appointed for man upon the earth,—shall interfere with this peopling of the stars, we may rest assured that, until men can exist without food, the ratio of increase of population will never exceed that of the means of subsistence. Food may be reared beyond the wants of a people, and such a case has produced slavery and misery to the cultivators of Botany Bay;g but it is impossible that any term in the progression of subsistence can be less than its corresponding term in that of population, else that corresponding term would cease to be. Experience then never did nor ever can shew different progressions in population and in food, in favor of the former; and, as to the difference of inherent power (if a power which can never be exerted have a meaning), the power of increase in plants and animals is obviously equal to that of man.
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SECTION III.
OF THE RATIO OF INCREASE IN HUMAN POPULATION
We have already observed that the progressions of nature are not formed like those of the mathematician. They do not start from one term to another, but proceed insensibly, so as to fill up all the interstices between the terms of the series; and it is only by catching at different points in the order of time, that progressions are extracted, to form (or oftener to suit) the theories of philosophers. It is known for instance that bodies fall to the earth with an accelerated motion. That acceleration has been assumed to be such,that the spaces described by the falling body shall always be in proportion to the squares of the times. Experiments were made on a petty scale to prove the truth of this theory, some of which appeared to coincide in a remarkable degree, while others presented very different results. It was then assumed that the ratio could exist only in a vacuum, on account of the resistance of the atmospherical air,—and as we have no means of making the experiment in vacuo, the principle still remains a mere gratis dictum. It is nevertheless considered as unquestionable; and is even made to guide the planets in their orbits.
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In a similar manner, though with humbler claims to confidence, Mr. Malthus has adopted the principle, assumed by his predecessors, of a tendency to a continued geometrical ratio in the increase of human population; and has built upon this hypothesis, his theory of accounting for the vise and misery which exist among mankind. We have now to consider from what data this principle of increase has been inferred; but we may previously remark, that it is the tendency to this ratio of increase, and not the increase itself, which Mr. Malthus exhibits as the evil genius of the human race. This embryo of future famine—this being that is yet to be—is perpetually at war with the good genius of subsistence. The hand of industry is palsied, and the fruits of nature are shriveled, by the touch of the demon. He hangs the ruin over our heads, and we are crushed by its weight before it falls.
Granting the power of increase to the human species, the methods of investigating the law of the series will vary according to our view of the origin of mankind. On this subject, however much men may differ in minute particulars, there are only two general and acknowledged systems of belief. The one is the peopling of the earth as recorded in the scriptures: the other is the aspect of human society as it appears to every succeeding generation, modified by the degree of confidence that such generation
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These Tables are formed from the comparison of 9 years; but, did they represent the average of centuries, they would then give us a fair view of the progress and waste of human life, in the state and climate of Sweden. We will suppose that they do so.
It appears then that 370 annual births are just sufficient to keep up a population of 10,000 persons. These 370 (or 1850 in 5 years) constitute a population of 1408, under 5 years of age, who are renewed by the births as they grow older or die. These 1408 are reduced by deaths to 1076 between the ages of 5 and 10, who are again reduced to 1015, being the number living between 10 and 15. In the same manner, from the continual supply by births and reductions by deaths, the different numbers of every age, making up the whole population, are regularly kept, up throughout the century, which here appears to be the limit of the age of man. In actual existence these numbers will vary above or below the numbers of the Table, which are here given as an average proportion of a society of little or no increase.
The supply of this society is by children in nonage. The 370 annually born are expanded so as to keep up all the ranks of the different ages of which the 10,000 population consists; and for that purpose it matters not whether they be produced by the whole, or by a part of the tribe,-or whether they drop from the clouds.
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In fact however these children are brought into the world by the child-bearing females. The period, during which women are capable of child-bearing is, in few cases, above 20 years,- rarely more than 25. Early marriages seem to produce no difference in this respect; because, the sooner they begin, the sooner they cease to be prolific. The whole range in Europe is between 15 and 45; and, in taking the numbers from the table, it matters little whether we count them between 15 and 40, or between 20 and 45: the amount is not materially different. Polygamy is not allowed in Sweden; and therefore these 370 children may be considered as produced by not more than the number of the population between 20 and 45; that is, by 3534 married persons. It will signify nothing that the husbands are occasionally of other ages, for the number (3534) would not thereby be increased: the females of these ages only being capable of childbearing. Of these 3534, a proportion of women (diseased from birth or by after accidents) are never fitted for marriage; and it will therefore be no extravagant assertion to say that the married persons in this society will never exceed 3000, if ever they amount to that number. These 3000 persons then are the ever-during source from which this society flows. Their children fill up the vacancies of death, and recruit the ranks of propagators as they are invalided by age; but all the females, and a number equal to
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all the males, above 45 years old, cease to be useful in the continuation of the race. There are 2108 persons above the age of 45; and if we add to these the number who are too diseased for marrying (of which we supposed 534 between 20 and 45) and the number of children, who, though counted with the others, are doomed never to swell the list of real propagators, we speak within bounds when we assert, that of these 10,000 persons, there are 3000 who are useless in the work of procreation. These 3000 -more or less, according to healthy or unhealthy seasons,-form the fluctuating balance of what would otherwise be a permanent population. The 370 children annually born, contain among their number the proportion necessary to keep up these 3000 useless adjuncts to the hive: and, though all the 3000 were to perish in a morning, so as to reduce the society to 7000, the effective propagators would remain, the births would continue the same, and the 3000 would gradually be renewed like the severed limbs of the polypus. As an example, we will suppose that the 2108 persons above 45 years of age are all destroyed by accident or design. Their gradual renewal will be apparent from the following Table:
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From the foregoing table we find that, although we destroyed more than a fifth of the population, the whole are created anew in the course of 50 years. The 10,000 inhabitants are again brought forward, and the society ceases to have any further increase. If, in addition to the 2108 persons here cut off, all the diseased and inefficient had been likewise exterminated, the society would have been reduced to less than 7000. The apparent number of propagators would have thus been lessened,but the births would not therefore have been fewer ; and in a certain number of years, as in the present case, every chasm would have been filled, and the original number of 10,000 human beings would have been brought again, and in the same order, to our view. There may therefore happen to be very extensive variations in the census of a society, in the germ of which there is no principle of permanent increase. They are precisely those adventitious beings who increase with favorable years, and who, when unfavorable seasons arrive, swell by clusters the bills of mortality. A series of seasons unfavorable to the] vegetable productions of the earth, is also unfavorable to human life, particularly to that of the infirm and the aged. These die of disease, not of famine: for, except in the nauseous and bidden dens of a crowded and selfish metropolis, where man lies unseen and unpitied, there are comparatively few in Europe who perish of hunger. Of the
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8000 who are old or diseased, two or three ungenial seasons may sweep two thirds from the earth. These two thirds are a fifth of the whole population, and would leave a mighty blank in the census of a nation. We see however that this blank would be rapidly filled up, and a return of genial years might make them even more numerous than they had previously been.
If, in the society which we have taken for our example, we were to suppose that all those who reached the age of 45 were to exist a thousand years, while the law of population remained otherwise the same, the elders of the society would continue to increase during these ten centuries, when,after having risen to a number which We Will not now stay to calculate, the increase would again come to a stand, and the census of the nation would afterwards remain stationary.
Again : keeping in view our table of 10,000, let us suppose a colony of 3837 persons, male and female, between the ages of 15 and 40 (which we will take for the marriageable ages in a new country), and in such proportions as they are found in Europe. Let them be from Sweden, and be possessed of only the Swedish powers of propagation. These persons then, being the exact numbers in our table of 10,000, "will form the nidus of a race, in the same manner as the persons at the outset of the immediately preceding Table; except that, until their children arrive at the are of 15, the propagators
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not being supplied by their growing successors, would diminish in numbers for a certain time. To remedy this, let there be an immigration, for the first 15 years, of 172 annually, or about a twenty-second part of the original colonists, which 172 will exactly keep up the number of our first column (those between 15 and 20) as they waste by age and death. The following table will show the progress of the colony for the first 15 years:
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At the end of these 15 years, the number of the propagators will be continued the same, by means of the grown up children, without further importation. The society now exhibits an extraordinary increase. The original settlers were 3837, and the annual immigrants amount altogether to 2580. The latter however, as far as propagation is concerned, may be reckoned at only half that number, because on an average they have lived only 7 1/2 years in the colony. About 5000 propagators then have, in 15 years, increased their number by nearly 3000 additional human beings, independent of those that have been lost by death. It may be remarked too, that we took our colonists from the general mass between 15 and 40, which included the blind and the maimed, the diseased and the dying. But such persons do not emigrate: and this increased population might have sprung from a colony much less numerous than what we have here stated. In taking a census therefore of an infant colony, we need not wonder that it should double its numbers in a very short period. The emigrants, who arrive in small numbers afterwards, are less observed than the primitive founders; and it is extremely probable that many such establishments may double their numbers, apparently from propagation alone, m less than 20 years. The principle however on which this duplication rests, escapes the eye of the common observer. The colony is not a society in the sense which we understand of a
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nation. It is the first expansion of a set of picked propagators, without parents and without children, which two classes, together with the diseased and ineffective, constitute nearly three-fourths of the population of modern Europe. It is the body of the polypus without its limbs, which its inherent energies are able to renew. Till these are completed, the increase will continue. If our colony have no further accession of immigrants, it will increase until# it muster its number of 10,000, after which it will continue permanent. Mr. Malthus catches the polypus in the middle of its growth;—he measures the length of limbs already attained, and, comparing these with time, he forms a ratio of increase, in which, he asserts, they will expand for ever!
A careful census of our 15 years' colony will give ample evidence that it increases solely because it is a society that is incomplete. In an indigenous society there are nearly a fourth of its numbers above 45 years of age. Here there are only 878 out of 8770, or about a tenth of the population. The higher ages, the extremities of the polypus are not yet formed; neither, if immigration were continued, would they ever be, Of this the American censuses give sufficient proof. In none of the United States is the number of persons above 45 more than from 16 to 17 per cent. of the population, while m many of the newly settled districts they do not exceed 7 or 8, as will appear more particularly in the following table.
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Proportion of white inhabitants, above and below the age of 45, (to a propulation of 10,000) in the different districts and territories of the United States of America in 1810, compared with the kingdom of Sweden from 1755 to 1763.
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Resting, as Mr. Malthas has done, the whole0 of the proof of his geometrical ratio on the censuses of the United States, it must be acknowledged that he has by no means stretched his evidence beyond what it would bear. The increase in the population of the new colonies between 1800 and 1810 is such as almost to stagger belief. The following Table is extracted from the censuses, but arranged so as best to, elucidate our observations.
White inhabitants in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Indiana in 1800 and in 1810.
Here we have a population of 281,341 persons, which more than doubles its numbers in 10 years, while one division of this population is increased, within that period, to more than 5 times its original amount. These are ratios of which Mr. Malthus might boast, but of which he has not boasted.
When enumerations are taken every 10 years, it is obvious, exclusive of immigration, that in any particular census the persons living above 10 years of age must have all existed in the census immediately preceding. In that of 1810
[281]for instance, all above 10 years formed part of the population of 1800; and are in reality the same, except inasmuch as they are diminished by death. Those under 10 have all been born in the interval between the censuses.
The whole population of 1800 in the preceding Table was 281,341. These in 10 years would be diminished to 200,000, under the most favorable laws that have hitherto been observed of human mortality :—but the number of persons above 10 years of age in 1810 were found to be 357,102; and therefore it is clear to a demonstration that this society must have been recruited by more than 160,000 immigrants: for, of these immigrants themselves many must have died, and besides, some of those under 10 years of age, may have been born in other countries
It may be said, and perhaps with truth, that many of these immigrants may have been from other parts of the United States, and not from Europe: but, comparing in the same manner the whole of the American census we shall find an astonishing extent of immigration: The white population of 1800 was 4,305,971. These in 10 years would be diminished by a fourth. It is very improbable that more than 3,200,000 would have been alive in 1810, for whatever proportion the births of that country may bear to the whole population, the proportion of deaths is certainly greater than in Europe.
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These 3,200,000 then should have constituted the number of those above 10 years of age in the census of 1810, had there been no importation from other countries. But the actual census above 10 years of age was 3,845,389, giving a surplus of 645,389, which can be accounted for in no other way than by immigration The census of 1810 contains also 2,016,704 children under 10 years. Part of these too, as well as the deaths of immigrants since their arrival, should be added to the 645,389 above stated; and therefore of the 1,556,122 persons, which the census of 1810 exhibits beyond that of 1800, it is as clear as sunshine that nearly one half was added by direct immigration. Of the effects on the increase of population by the introduction of grown-up persons we have already spoken; and, adverting to these effects along with the statements now given, the additional population is completely accounted for, without supposing a power of procreation beyond what is found to prevail among European nations.
But it is needless to dwell longer on this part of the subject, for he, who will attentively examine the statistical tables of the United States, will discover in every line a marked distinction between them and those of Europe. At every step they announce a race, who, as has been supposed of their country, have but lately emerged from the waves. America has more resemblance to a camp than to a nation. Its inhabitants are a band of adventurers, continually recruited by men like themselves, who seek for conquests in a new world, and have left their parents to perish on a distant shore. It is in vain therefore to look to that country for a geometrical or any other regulated' increase of population. Immigration must cease for centuries, before such a law could be there developed, even allowing it to belong to human nature.
But it may be asked, if a colony were constituted of persons of all ages, such as they exist in Europe, and were the proportion of births raised in a great degree by the removal of the present checks to population, might not the inhabitants increase in a geometrical ratio, and double their numbers in 25 years? This is the only question that remains to be considered, and its discussion will close the present Dissertation.
In order to have a clear view of this proposition, we shall again refer to our Table of 10,000 which we proportioned from the Swedish population.h We must also remind our readers that this Table was formed from a society of little or no increase. We have already considered this society as stationary; but, whether so or not, it is equally effective for the sake of illustration.
We have before observed that the waste of these 10,000 is replaced by the 370 annual births; and that this perpetual flow of children
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successively fills up the ranks of the rare, as they are thinned by the hand of death. Where man is indigenous, these are the gradations of society; and, before it could be doubled, we must have two for one of every age from the cradle to the tomb. Now, by what means are these additional human beings to be brought upon the stage of life in 10, 15, or even in 25 years? Imagination may add birth to birth at pleasure, but how shall our old men and old women be so rapidly created, unless we can close the gates of death, and hasten the flight of time? Were we indeed to attend to numbers only, without regard to age, we might easily conceive an abundant increase; but it does not therefore follow that this imaginary increase must proceed in a geometrical progression. 'Supposing that from some extraordinary fortuitous circumstances,—from an increase in the genial powers of nature, or from a particular interposition of Providence,—the females of our little society were all at once to become doubly prolific; and that thereby the annual births were to be double what they now are, or 740 in place of 370. It is plain that these additional 370 annual children would, independent of their own progeny, form a new race, the exact counterpart of the old; and that the whole of the society would be thereby doubled in about 100 years. Were the original stock alone to be propagators, we should thus have an addition of
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10,000 every century, being an increase in the ratio of 1, 2, 3, 4, &c. But at the end of 20 years (taking an average period) as many as remain alive of the 370 additional children that were bora in the first year, will arrive at the marriageable age. The next, and every succeeding year, a like number will be added to the list of propagators, and will become the parents of a new race. The children of these last will become parents in their turn, thus engrafting a succession of scions, one upon the other, and all originally springing from a parent tree. Instead then of a geometrical ratio the period of duplication would be continually lessening, as the several scions were added to the stock. Supposing the new propagators to have the same prolific power that we have given to their progenitors, it would require 40 years for the first doubling, and about 30 for each of the two succeeding ones; and this period would become less and less, through a series of a very complicated form, though it would never be under 25 years. Besides, these duplications would be numerical only; for the numbers of the early ages would go on in an increasing ratio, but there would not be the same proportion of increase among those of riper years. We have calculated the progress of that series, but the Tables are too extended to be conveniently inserted in this place.
It is in vain to look for a geometrical ratio in the increase of any society, unless the society were originally constituted in that progression.
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Assuming the females between 20 and 45 years of age to be the only source from which the continuance of the race can be derived, the series which would denote the varying numbers of those females, in the order of time, would also denote the law of increase in the , censuses of the tribe or nation. All the females now existing between 20 and 45 will be gradually erased from the list, by superannuation or by death, in the space of 25 years* Their place will be filled by others; and if the number of the new mothers be not then double what they now are, we may rest assured that the society does not exhibit a permanent principle of increase, in the ratio and in the time prescribed by Mr. Malthus. Had it been the order of Nature that the human race should have originally been arranged in a geometrical progression; had the law been such that every year the births should have increased in a fixed proportion to the preceding ;—had the number of the living at every succeeding age been increased in the same manner and in the same proportion: and, had the whole frame of society been so constituted that the child-bearing females should, by this regular succession of the inferior ages, have doubled their numbers at equal periods, such as every 25 years then, and then only, could a geometrical ratio of the increase of population have existed. But mankind have never been found so arranged, and the laws that regulate the succession of human beings do not seem to be of
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that feeble texture, which would warrant us in predicting that what has never been will ever be.
On the whole it is obvious that the assertion, that human population has a tendency to increase in a geometrical ratio, is, in the utmost degree, arbitrary. It is the mere dictum of Mr. Malthus, and when he finds, as he always does, that this ratio of increase has not hitherto acted, instead of doubting, as he ought, the truth of his hypothesis, he looks around for concomitant circumstances which, he says, have retarded or destroyed its operation: that is, for circumstances which have retarded or destroyed the operation of a principle, of which he has brought no evidence that it ever existed. But he even gives these retarding circumstances themselves as evidence. He calls them checks upon population, before he has proved that population required such checks. "There exist vise and misery in the world; therefore these prevent mankind from doubling their number every 25 years!" Such is the reasoning. —The point in dispute is always taken for granted.
Were we to draw our inferences from a survey of the world and its history, we should come to no such conclusion as the principle of an unlimited increase. Man is individually a transient visitor of the earth. A few revolutions of the sun, and this proud being is thrust from the scene. Is the race then permanent? Many species of animals have disappeared, and fill our cabinets with their fossil remains. The mammuth
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no longer ranges over the globe, though for a time he must have lived with extensive power. What vise, misery or moral restraint has prevented the unlimited increase of the eagles in the air, or of the sharks in the ocean, where they reign paramount lords and masters? May not the law of increase—may not the duration of life itself diminish as it radiates from the primeval stock? Something of this kind is observed in vegetables, whose qualities deteriorate, and whose seeds more and more degenerate as they are distant from the parent tree. So far from having to frighten ourselves with the idea of an overwhelming population, have we not rather to fear that we are sinking by degrees into a degenerate race, which in the lapse of time may be swept from the globe? The earth itself is probably not immortal, and why should its puny inhabitants? All these, to be sure, are questions of mere possibilities, but they are as probable and as demonstrable, as the possibilities of Mr. Malthus. If the terms of the proposition do not involve a contradiction, there is no assertion, with regard to future contingencies, that can be proved to be untrue. But possibilities are inhabitants of the land of dreams. They may amuse in the closet, but they are useless in the conduct of life; and ought to be far beneath the notice of the legislators of nations.
aEssay on Population, Vol. III, p. 343, 344, Note.
bVol. I. p. 5, 6.
cVol. I. p. 9.
dWitness the horrible famine i India in 1771.
eIf want alone or the desire of the laboring clasies to possess the necessaries and conveniences of life, were a sufficient stimulus to production, there is no state in Europe or in the world that would have found any other practical limit to its wealth than its power to produce; and the earth would probably before this period have contained, at the very least, ten times as many inhabitants as are supported on its surface at present. But ... where the right of private property is established &c &c." Vide Malthus on Political Economy p. 348.
fSee Malthus on Political Economy, as quoted in page 484.
gSee Wentworth's Account of that Colony.
h Vide page 268.
Chronology :
November 30, 1819 : Of Population -- Publication.
January 28, 2017 : Of Population -- Added.
December 30, 2021 : Of Population -- Updated.
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