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An Essay on the Principle of Population

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Title: An Essay on the Principle of Population

Author: T. R. Malthus


        
Release date: July 1, 2003 [eBook #4239]
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Language: English

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Produced by Charles Aldarondo.  HTML version by Al Haines.









An Essay on the Principle of Population

Thomas Malthus



1798





AN ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION, AS IT AFFECTS THE FUTURE
IMPROVEMENT OF SOCIETY WITH REMARKS ON THE SPECULATIONS OF MR. GODWIN,
M. CONDORCET, AND OTHER WRITERS.

LONDON, PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, IN ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD, 1798.




Preface


The following Essay owes its origin to a conversation with a friend, on
the subject of Mr Godwin's essay on avarice and profusion, in his
Enquirer. The discussion started the general question of the future
improvement of society, and the Author at first sat down with an
intention of merely stating his thoughts to his friend, upon paper, in
a clearer manner than he thought he could do in conversation. But as
the subject opened upon him, some ideas occurred, which he did not
recollect to have met with before; and as he conceived that every least
light, on a topic so generally interesting, might be received with
candour, he determined to put his thoughts in a form for publication.

The Essay might, undoubtedly, have been rendered much more complete by
a collection of a greater number of facts in elucidation of the general
argument. But a long and almost total interruption from very particular
business, joined to a desire (perhaps imprudent) of not delaying the
publication much beyond the time that he originally proposed, prevented
the Author from giving to the subject an undivided attention. He
presumes, however, that the facts which he has adduced will be found to
form no inconsiderable evidence for the truth of his opinion respecting
the future improvement of mankind. As the Author contemplates this
opinion at present, little more appears to him to be necessary than a
plain statement, in addition to the most cursory view of society, to
establish it.

It is an obvious truth, which has been taken notice of by many writers,
that population must always be kept down to the level of the means of
subsistence; but no writer that the Author recollects has inquired
particularly into the means by which this level is effected: and it is
a view of these means which forms, to his mind, the strongest obstacle
in the way to any very great future improvement of society. He hopes it
will appear that, in the discussion of this interesting subject, he is
actuated solely by a love of truth, and not by any prejudices against
any particular set of men, or of opinions. He professes to have read
some of the speculations on the future improvement of society in a
temper very different from a wish to find them visionary, but he has
not acquired that command over his understanding which would enable him
to believe what he wishes, without evidence, or to refuse his assent to
what might be unpleasing, when accompanied with evidence.

The view which he has given of human life has a melancholy hue, but he
feels conscious that he has drawn these dark tints from a conviction
that they are really in the picture, and not from a jaundiced eye or an
inherent spleen of disposition. The theory of mind which he has
sketched in the two last chapters accounts to his own understanding in
a satisfactory manner for the existence of most of the evils of life,
but whether it will have the same effect upon others must be left to
the judgement of his readers.

If he should succeed in drawing the attention of more able men to what
he conceives to be the principal difficulty in the way to the
improvement of society and should, in consequence, see this difficulty
removed, even in theory, he will gladly retract his present opinions
and rejoice in a conviction of his error.

                                     7 June 1798




CHAPTER 1

Question stated--Little prospect of a determination of it, from the
enmity of the opposing parties--The principal argument against the
perfectibility of man and of society has never been fairly
answered--Nature of the difficulty arising from population--Outline of
the principal argument of the Essay


The great and unlooked for discoveries that have taken place of late
years in natural philosophy, the increasing diffusion of general
knowledge from the extension of the art of printing, the ardent and
unshackled spirit of inquiry that prevails throughout the lettered and
even unlettered world, the new and extraordinary lights that have been
thrown on political subjects which dazzle and astonish the
understanding, and particularly that tremendous phenomenon in the
political horizon, the French Revolution, which, like a blazing comet,
seems destined either to inspire with fresh life and vigour, or to
scorch up and destroy the shrinking inhabitants of the earth, have all
concurred to lead many able men into the opinion that we were touching
on a period big with the most important changes, changes that would in
some measure be decisive of the future fate of mankind.

It has been said that the great question is now at issue, whether man
shall henceforth start forwards with accelerated velocity towards
illimitable, and hitherto unconceived improvement, or be condemned to a
perpetual oscillation between happiness and misery, and after every
effort remain still at an immeasurable distance from the wished-for
goal.

Yet, anxiously as every friend of mankind must look forwards to the
termination of this painful suspense, and eagerly as the inquiring mind
would hail every ray of light that might assist its view into futurity,
it is much to be lamented that the writers on each side of this
momentous question still keep far aloof from each other. Their mutual
arguments do not meet with a candid examination. The question is not
brought to rest on fewer points, and even in theory scarcely seems to
be approaching to a decision.

The advocate for the present order of things is apt to treat the sect
of speculative philosophers either as a set of artful and designing
knaves who preach up ardent benevolence and draw captivating pictures
of a happier state of society only the better to enable them to destroy
the present establishments and to forward their own deep-laid schemes
of ambition, or as wild and mad-headed enthusiasts whose silly
speculations and absurd paradoxes are not worthy the attention of any
reasonable man.

The advocate for the perfectibility of man, and of society, retorts on
the defender of establishments a more than equal contempt. He brands
him as the slave of the most miserable and narrow prejudices; or as the
defender of the abuses of civil society only because he profits by
them. He paints him either as a character who prostitutes his
understanding to his interest, or as one whose powers of mind are not
of a size to grasp any thing great and noble, who cannot see above five
yards before him, and who must therefore be utterly unable to take in
the views of the enlightened benefactor of mankind.

In this unamicable contest the cause of truth cannot but suffer. The
really good arguments on each side of the question are not allowed to
have their proper weight. Each pursues his own theory, little
solicitous to correct or improve it by an attention to what is advanced
by his opponents.

The friend of the present order of things condemns all political
speculations in the gross. He will not even condescend to examine the
grounds from which the perfectibility of society is inferred. Much less
will he give himself the trouble in a fair and candid manner to attempt
an exposition of their fallacy.

The speculative philosopher equally offends against the cause of truth.
With eyes fixed on a happier state of society, the blessings of which
he paints in the most captivating colours, he allows himself to indulge
in the most bitter invectives against every present establishment,
without applying his talents to consider the best and safest means of
removing abuses and without seeming to be aware of the tremendous
obstacles that threaten, even in theory, to oppose the progress of man
towards perfection.

It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will
always be confirmed by experiment. Yet so much friction, and so many
minute circumstances occur in practice, which it is next to impossible
for the most enlarged and penetrating mind to foresee, that on few
subjects can any theory be pronounced just, till all the arguments
against it have been maturely weighed and clearly and consistently
refuted.

I have read some of the speculations on the perfectibility of man and
of society with great pleasure. I have been warmed and delighted with
the enchanting picture which they hold forth. I ardently wish for such
happy improvements. But I see great, and, to my understanding,
unconquerable difficulties in the way to them. These difficulties it is
my present purpose to state, declaring, at the same time, that so far
from exulting in them, as a cause of triumph over the friends of
innovation, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see them
completely removed.

The most important argument that I shall adduce is certainly not new.
The principles on which it depends have been explained in part by Hume,
and more at large by Dr Adam Smith. It has been advanced and applied to
the present subject, though not with its proper weight, or in the most
forcible point of view, by Mr Wallace, and it may probably have been
stated by many writers that I have never met with. I should certainly
therefore not think of advancing it again, though I mean to place it in
a point of view in some degree different from any that I have hitherto
seen, if it had ever been fairly and satisfactorily answered.

The cause of this neglect on the part of the advocates for the
perfectibility of mankind is not easily accounted for. I cannot doubt
the talents of such men as Godwin and Condorcet. I am unwilling to
doubt their candour. To my understanding, and probably to that of most
others, the difficulty appears insurmountable. Yet these men of
acknowledged ability and penetration scarcely deign to notice it, and
hold on their course in such speculations with unabated ardour and
undiminished confidence. I have certainly no right to say that they
purposely shut their eyes to such arguments. I ought rather to doubt
the validity of them, when neglected by such men, however forcibly
their truth may strike my own mind. Yet in this respect it must be
acknowledged that we are all of us too prone to err. If I saw a glass
of wine repeatedly presented to a man, and he took no notice of it, I
should be apt to think that he was blind or uncivil. A juster
philosophy might teach me rather to think that my eyes deceived me and
that the offer was not really what I conceived it to be.

In entering upon the argument I must premise that I put out of the
question, at present, all mere conjectures, that is, all suppositions,
the probable realization of which cannot be inferred upon any just
philosophical grounds. A writer may tell me that he thinks man will
ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him. But
before he can expect to bring any reasonable person over to his
opinion, he ought to shew that the necks of mankind have been gradually
elongating, that the lips have grown harder and more prominent, that
the legs and feet are daily altering their shape, and that the hair is
beginning to change into stubs of feathers. And till the probability of
so wonderful a conversion can be shewn, it is surely lost time and lost
eloquence to expatiate on the happiness of man in such a state; to
describe his powers, both of running and flying, to paint him in a
condition where all narrow luxuries would be contemned, where he would
be employed only in collecting the necessaries of life, and where,
consequently, each man's share of labour would be light, and his
portion of leisure ample.

I think I may fairly make two postulata.

First, That food is necessary to the existence of man.

Secondly, That the passion between the sexes is necessary and will
remain nearly in its present state.

These two laws, ever since we have had any knowledge of mankind, appear
to have been fixed laws of our nature, and, as we have not hitherto
seen any alteration in them, we have no right to conclude that they
will ever cease to be what they now are, without an immediate act of
power in that Being who first arranged the system of the universe, and
for the advantage of his creatures, still executes, according to fixed
laws, all its various operations.

I do not know that any writer has supposed that on this earth man will
ultimately be able to live without food. But Mr Godwin has conjectured
that the passion between the sexes may in time be extinguished. As,
however, he calls this part of his work a deviation into the land of
conjecture, I will not dwell longer upon it at present than to say that
the best arguments for the perfectibility of man are drawn from a
contemplation of the great progress that he has already made from the
savage state and the difficulty of saying where he is to stop. But
towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes, no progress
whatever has hitherto been made. It appears to exist in as much force
at present as it did two thousand or four thousand years ago. There are
individual exceptions now as there always have been. But, as these
exceptions do not appear to increase in number, it would surely be a
very unphilosophical mode of arguing to infer, merely from the
existence of an exception, that the exception would, in time, become
the rule, and the rule the exception.

Assuming then my postulata as granted, I say, that the power of
population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to
produce subsistence for man.

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.
Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight
acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in
comparison of the second.

By that law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of
man, the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal.

This implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from
the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall somewhere and
must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind.

Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, nature has scattered the
seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand. She has
been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to
rear them. The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with
ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds
in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious all
pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds.
The race of plants and the race of animals shrink under this great
restrictive law. And the race of man cannot, by any efforts of reason,
escape from it. Among plants and animals its effects are waste of seed,
sickness, and premature death. Among mankind, misery and vice. The
former, misery, is an absolutely necessary consequence of it. Vice is a
highly probable consequence, and we therefore see it abundantly
prevail, but it ought not, perhaps, to be called an absolutely
necessary consequence. The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation
to evil.

This natural inequality of the two powers of population and of
production in the earth, and that great law of our nature which must
constantly keep their effects equal, form the great difficulty that to
me appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society.
All other arguments are of slight and subordinate consideration in
comparison of this. I see no way by which man can escape from the
weight of this law which pervades all animated nature. No fancied
equality, no agrarian regulations in their utmost extent, could remove
the pressure of it even for a single century. And it appears,
therefore, to be decisive against the possible existence of a society,
all the members of which should live in ease, happiness, and
comparative leisure; and feel no anxiety about providing the means of
subsistence for themselves and families.

Consequently, if the premises are just, the argument is conclusive
against the perfectibility of the mass of mankind.

I have thus sketched the general outline of the argument, but I will
examine it more particularly, and I think it will be found that
experience, the true source and foundation of all knowledge, invariably
confirms its truth.




CHAPTER 2

The different ratio in which population and food increase--The
necessary effects of these different ratios of increase--Oscillation
produced by them in the condition of the lower classes of
society--Reasons why this oscillation has not been so much observed as
might be expected--Three propositions on which the general argument of
the Essay depends--The different states in which mankind have been
known to exist proposed to be examined with reference to these three
propositions.


I said that population, when unchecked, increased in a geometrical
ratio, and subsistence for man in an arithmetical ratio.

Let us examine whether this position be just. I think it will be
allowed, that no state has hitherto existed (at least that we have any
account of) where the manners were so pure and simple, and the means of
subsistence so abundant, that no check whatever has existed to early
marriages, among the lower classes, from a fear of not providing well
for their families, or among the higher classes, from a fear of
lowering their condition in life. Consequently in no state that we have
yet known has the power of population been left to exert itself with
perfect freedom.

Whether the law of marriage be instituted or not, the dictate of nature
and virtue seems to be an early attachment to one woman. Supposing a
liberty of changing in the case of an unfortunate choice, this liberty
would not affect population till it arose to a height greatly vicious;
and we are now supposing the existence of a society where vice is
scarcely known.

In a state therefore of great equality and virtue, where pure and
simple manners prevailed, and where the means of subsistence were so
abundant that no part of the society could have any fears about
providing amply for a family, the power of population being left to
exert itself unchecked, the increase of the human species would
evidently be much greater than any increase that has been hitherto
known.

In the United States of America, where the means of subsistence have
been more ample, the manners of the people more pure, and consequently
the checks to early marriages fewer, than in any of the modern states
of Europe, the population has been found to double itself in
twenty-five years.

This ratio of increase, though short of the utmost power of population,
yet as the result of actual experience, we will take as our rule, and
say, that population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every
twenty-five years or increases in a geometrical ratio.

Let us now take any spot of earth, this Island for instance, and see in
what ratio the subsistence it affords can be supposed to increase. We
will begin with it under its present state of cultivation.

If I allow that by the best possible policy, by breaking up more land
and by great encouragements to agriculture, the produce of this Island
may be doubled in the first twenty-five years, I think it will be
allowing as much as any person can well demand.

In the next twenty-five years, it is impossible to suppose that the
produce could be quadrupled. It would be contrary to all our knowledge
of the qualities of land. The very utmost that we can conceive, is,
that the increase in the second twenty-five years might equal the
present produce. Let us then take this for our rule, though certainly
far beyond the truth, and allow that, by great exertion, the whole
produce of the Island might be increased every twenty-five years, by a
quantity of subsistence equal to what it at present produces. The most
enthusiastic speculator cannot suppose a greater increase than this. In
a few centuries it would make every acre of land in the Island like a
garden.

Yet this ratio of increase is evidently arithmetical.

It may be fairly said, therefore, that the means of subsistence
increase in an arithmetical ratio. Let us now bring the effects of
these two ratios together.

The population of the Island is computed to be about seven millions,
and we will suppose the present produce equal to the support of such a
number. In the first twenty-five years the population would be fourteen
millions, and the food being also doubled, the means of subsistence
would be equal to this increase. In the next twenty-five years the
population would be twenty-eight millions, and the means of subsistence
only equal to the support of twenty-one millions. In the next period,
the population would be fifty-six millions, and the means of
subsistence just sufficient for half that number. And at the conclusion
of the first century the population would be one hundred and twelve
millions and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of
thirty-five millions, which would leave a population of seventy-seven
millions totally unprovided for.

A great emigration necessarily implies unhappiness of some kind or
other in the country that is deserted. For few persons will leave their
families, connections, friends, and native land, to seek a settlement
in untried foreign climes, without some strong subsisting causes of
uneasiness where they are, or the hope of some great advantages in the
place to which they are going.

But to make the argument more general and less interrupted by the
partial views of emigration, let us take the whole earth, instead of
one spot, and suppose that the restraints to population were
universally removed. If the subsistence for man that the earth affords
was to be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what
the whole world at present produces, this would allow the power of
production in the earth to be absolutely unlimited, and its ratio of
increase much greater than we can conceive that any possible exertions
of mankind could make it.

Taking the population of the world at any number, a thousand millions,
for instance, the human species would increase in the ratio of--1, 2,
4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, etc. and subsistence as--1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc. In two centuries and a quarter, the population
would be to the means of subsistence as 512 to 10: in three centuries
as 4096 to 13, and in two thousand years the difference would be almost
incalculable, though the produce in that time would have increased to
an immense extent.

No limits whatever are placed to the productions of the earth; they may
increase for ever and be greater than any assignable quantity, yet
still the power of population being a power of a superior order, the
increase of the human species can only be kept commensurate to the
increase of the means of subsistence by the constant operation of the
strong law of necessity acting as a check upon the greater power.

The effects of this check remain now to be considered.

Among plants and animals the view of the subject is simple. They are
all impelled by a powerful instinct to the increase of their species,
and this instinct is interrupted by no reasoning or doubts about
providing for their offspring. Wherever therefore there is liberty, the
power of increase is exerted, and the superabundant effects are
repressed afterwards by want of room and nourishment, which is common
to animals and plants, and among animals by becoming the prey of others.

The effects of this check on man are more complicated. Impelled to the
increase of his species by an equally powerful instinct, reason
interrupts his career and asks him whether he may not bring beings into
the world for whom he cannot provide the means of subsistence. In a
state of equality, this would be the simple question. In the present
state of society, other considerations occur. Will he not lower his
rank in life? Will he not subject himself to greater difficulties than
he at present feels? Will he not be obliged to labour harder? and if he
has a large family, will his utmost exertions enable him to support
them? May he not see his offspring in rags and misery, and clamouring
for bread that he cannot give them? And may he not be reduced to the
grating necessity of forfeiting his independence, and of being obliged
to the sparing hand of charity for support?

These considerations are calculated to prevent, and certainly do
prevent, a very great number in all civilized nations from pursuing the
dictate of nature in an early attachment to one woman. And this
restraint almost necessarily, though not absolutely so, produces vice.
Yet in all societies, even those that are most vicious, the tendency to
a virtuous attachment is so strong that there is a constant effort
towards an increase of population. This constant effort as constantly
tends to subject the lower classes of the society to distress and to
prevent any great permanent amelioration of their condition.

The way in which, these effects are produced seems to be this. We will
suppose the means of subsistence in any country just equal to the easy
support of its inhabitants. The constant effort towards population,
which is found to act even in the most vicious societies, increases the
number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. The
food therefore which before supported seven millions must now be
divided among seven millions and a half or eight millions. The poor
consequently must live much worse, and many of them be reduced to
severe distress. The number of labourers also being above the
proportion of the work in the market, the price of labour must tend
toward a decrease, while the price of provisions would at the same time
tend to rise. The labourer therefore must work harder to earn the same
as he did before. During this season of distress, the discouragements
to marriage, and the difficulty of rearing a family are so great that
population is at a stand. In the mean time the cheapness of labour, the
plenty of labourers, and the necessity of an increased industry amongst
them, encourage cultivators to employ more labour upon their land, to
turn up fresh soil, and to manure and improve more completely what is
already in tillage, till ultimately the means of subsistence become in
the same proportion to the population as at the period from which we
set out. The situation of the labourer being then again tolerably
comfortable, the restraints to population are in some degree loosened,
and the same retrograde and progressive movements with respect to
happiness are repeated.

This sort of oscillation will not be remarked by superficial observers,
and it may be difficult even for the most penetrating mind to calculate
its periods. Yet that in all old states some such vibration does exist,
though from various transverse causes, in a much less marked, and in a
much more irregular manner than I have described it, no reflecting man
who considers the subject deeply can well doubt.

Many reasons occur why this oscillation has been less obvious, and less
decidedly confirmed by experience, than might naturally be expected.

One principal reason is that the histories of mankind that we possess
are histories only of the higher classes. We have but few accounts that
can be depended upon of the manners and customs of that part of mankind
where these retrograde and progressive movements chiefly take place. A
satisfactory history of this kind, on one people, and of one period,
would require the constant and minute attention of an observing mind
during a long life. Some of the objects of inquiry would be, in what
proportion to the number of adults was the number of marriages, to what
extent vicious customs prevailed in consequence of the restraints upon
matrimony, what was the comparative mortality among the children of the
most distressed part of the community and those who lived rather more
at their ease, what were the variations in the real price of labour,
and what were the observable differences in the state of the lower
classes of society with respect to ease and happiness, at different
times during a certain period.

Such a history would tend greatly to elucidate the manner in which the
constant check upon population acts and would probably prove the
existence of the retrograde and progressive movements that have been
mentioned, though the times of their vibrations must necessarily be
rendered irregular from the operation of many interrupting causes, such
as the introduction or failure of certain manufactures, a greater or
less prevalent spirit of agricultural enterprise, years of plenty, or
years of scarcity, wars and pestilence, poor laws, the invention of
processes for shortening labour without the proportional extension of
the market for the commodity, and, particularly, the difference between
the nominal and real price of labour, a circumstance which has perhaps
more than any other contributed to conceal this oscillation from common
view.

It very rarely happens that the nominal price of labour universally
falls, but we well know that it frequently remains the same, while the
nominal price of provisions has been gradually increasing. This is, in
effect, a real fall in the price of labour, and during this period the
condition of the lower orders of the community must gradually grow
worse and worse. But the farmers and capitalists are growing rich from
the real cheapness of labour. Their increased capitals enable them to
employ a greater number of men. Work therefore may be plentiful, and
the price of labour would consequently rise. But the want of freedom in
the market of labour, which occurs more or less in all communities,
either from parish laws, or the more general cause of the facility of
combination among the rich, and its difficulty among the poor, operates
to prevent the price of labour from rising at the natural period, and
keeps it down some time longer; perhaps till a year of scarcity, when
the clamour is too loud and the necessity too apparent to be resisted.

The true cause of the advance in the price of labour is thus concealed,
and the rich affect to grant it as an act of compassion and favour to
the poor, in consideration of a year of scarcity, and, when plenty
returns, indulge themselves in the most unreasonable of all complaints,
that the price does not again fall, when a little rejection would shew
them that it must have risen long before but from an unjust conspiracy
of their own.

But though the rich by unfair combinations contribute frequently to
prolong a season of distress among the poor, yet no possible form of
society could prevent the almost constant action of misery upon a great
part of mankind, if in a state of inequality, and upon all, if all were
equal.

The theory on which the truth of this position depends appears to me so
extremely clear that I feel at a loss to conjecture what part of it can
be denied.

That population cannot increase without the means of subsistence is a
proposition so evident that it needs no illustration.

That population does invariably increase where there are the means of
subsistence, the history of every people that have ever existed will
abundantly prove.

And that the superior power of population cannot be checked without
producing misery or vice, the ample portion of these too bitter
ingredients in the cup of human life and the continuance of the
physical causes that seem to have produced them bear too convincing a
testimony.

But, in order more fully to ascertain the validity of these three
propositions, let us examine the different states in which mankind have
been known to exist. Even a cursory review will, I think, be sufficient
to convince us that these propositions are incontrovertible truths.




CHAPTER 3

The savage or hunter state shortly reviewed--The shepherd state, or the
tribes of barbarians that overran the Roman Empire--The superiority of
the power of population to the means of subsistence--the cause of the
great tide of Northern Emigration.


In the rudest state of mankind, in which hunting is the principal
occupation, and the only mode of acquiring food; the means of
subsistence being scattered over a large extent of territory, the
comparative population must necessarily be thin. It is said that the
passion between the sexes is less ardent among the North American
Indians, than among any other race of men. Yet, notwithstanding this
apathy, the effort towards population, even in this people, seems to be
always greater than the means to support it. This appears, from the
comparatively rapid population that takes place, whenever any of the
tribes happen to settle in some fertile spot, and to draw nourishment
from more fruitful sources than that of hunting; and it has been
frequently remarked that when an Indian family has taken up its abode
near any European settlement, and adopted a more easy and civilized
mode of life, that one woman has reared five, or six, or more children;
though in the savage state it rarely happens that above one or two in a
family grow up to maturity. The same observation has been made with
regard to the Hottentots near the Cape. These facts prove the superior
power of population to the means of subsistence in nations of hunters,
and that this power always shews itself the moment it is left to act
with freedom.

It remains to inquire whether this power can be checked, and its
effects kept equal to the means of subsistence, without vice or misery.

The North American Indians, considered as a people, cannot justly be
called free and equal. In all the accounts we have of them, and,
indeed, of most other savage nations, the women are represented as much
more completely in a state of slavery to the men than the poor are to
the rich in civilized countries. One half the nation appears to act as
Helots to the other half, and the misery that checks population falls
chiefly, as it always must do, upon that part whose condition is lowest
in the scale of society. The infancy of man in the simplest state
requires considerable attention, but this necessary attention the women
cannot give, condemned as they are to the inconveniences and hardships
of frequent change of place and to the constant and unremitting
drudgery of preparing every thing for the reception of their tyrannic
lords. These exertions, sometimes during pregnancy or with children at
their backs, must occasion frequent miscarriages, and prevent any but
the most robust infants from growing to maturity. Add to these
hardships of the women the constant war that prevails among savages,
and the necessity which they frequently labour under of exposing their
aged and helpless parents, and of thus violating the first feelings of
nature, and the picture will not appear very free from the blot of
misery. In estimating the happiness of a savage nation, we must not fix
our eyes only on the warrior in the prime of life: he is one of a
hundred: he is the gentleman, the man of fortune, the chances have been
in his favour and many efforts have failed ere this fortunate being was
produced, whose guardian genius should preserve him through the
numberless dangers with which he would be surrounded from infancy to
manhood. The true points of comparison between two nations seem to be
the ranks in each which appear nearest to answer to each other. And in
this view, I should compare the warriors in the prime of life with the
gentlemen, and the women, children, and aged, with the lower classes of
the community in civilized states.

May we not then fairly infer from this short review, or rather, from
the accounts that may be referred to of nations of hunters, that their
population is thin from the scarcity of food, that it would immediately
increase if food was in greater plenty, and that, putting vice out of
the question among savages, misery is the check that represses the
superior power of population and keeps its effects equal to the means
of subsistence. Actual observation and experience tell us that this
check, with a few local and temporary exceptions, is constantly acting
now upon all savage nations, and the theory indicates that it probably
acted with nearly equal strength a thousand years ago, and it may not
be much greater a thousand years hence.

Of the manners and habits that prevail among nations of shepherds, the
next state of mankind, we are even more ignorant than of the savage
state. But that these nations could not escape the general lot of
misery arising from the want of subsistence, Europe, and all the
fairest countries in the world, bear ample testimony. Want was the goad
that drove the Scythian shepherds from their native haunts, like so
many famished wolves in search of prey. Set in motion by this all
powerful cause, clouds of Barbarians seemed to collect from all points
of the northern hemisphere. Gathering fresh darkness and terror as they
rolled on, the congregated bodies at length obscured the sun of Italy
and sunk the whole world in universal night. These tremendous effects,
so long and so deeply felt throughout the fairest portions of the
earth, may be traced to the simple cause of the superior power of
population to the means of subsistence.

It is well known that a country in pasture cannot support so many
inhabitants as a country in tillage, but what renders nations of
shepherds so formidable is the power which they possess of moving all
together and the necessity they frequently feel of exerting this power
in search of fresh pasture for their herds. A tribe that was rich in
cattle had an immediate plenty of food. Even the parent stock might be
devoured in a case of absolute necessity. The women lived in greater
ease than among nations of hunters. The men bold in their united
strength and confiding in their power of procuring pasture for their
cattle by change of place, felt, probably, but few fears about
providing for a family. These combined causes soon produced their
natural and invariable effect, an extended population. A more frequent
and rapid change of place became then necessary. A wider and more
extensive territory was successively occupied. A broader desolation
extended all around them. Want pinched the less fortunate members of
the society, and, at length, the impossibility of supporting such a
number together became too evident to be resisted. Young scions were
then pushed out from the parent-stock and instructed to explore fresh
regions and to gain happier seats for themselves by their swords. 'The
world was all before them where to choose.' Restless from present
distress, flushed with the hope of fairer prospects, and animated with
the spirit of hardy enterprise, these daring adventurers were likely to
become formidable adversaries to all who opposed them. The peaceful
inhabitants of the countries on which they rushed could not long
withstand the energy of men acting under such powerful motives of
exertion. And when they fell in with any tribes like their own, the
contest was a struggle for existence, and they fought with a desperate
courage, inspired by the rejection that death was the punishment of
defeat and life the prize of victory.

In these savage contests many tribes must have been utterly
exterminated. Some, probably, perished by hardship and famine. Others,
whose leading star had given them a happier direction, became great and
powerful tribes, and, in their turns, sent off fresh adventurers in
search of still more fertile seats. The prodigious waste of human life
occasioned by this perpetual struggle for room and food was more than
supplied by the mighty power of population, acting, in some degree,
unshackled from the consent habit of emigration. The tribes that
migrated towards the South, though they won these more fruitful regions
by continual battles, rapidly increased in number and power, from the
increased means of subsistence. Till at length the whole territory,
from the confines of China to the shores of the Baltic, was peopled by
a various race of Barbarians, brave, robust, and enterprising, inured
to hardship, and delighting in war. Some tribes maintained their
independence. Others ranged themselves under the standard of some
barbaric chieftain who led them to victory after victory, and what was
of more importance, to regions abounding in corn, wine, and oil, the
long wished for consummation, and great reward of their labours. An
Alaric, an Attila, or a Zingis Khan, and the chiefs around them, might
fight for glory, for the fame of extensive conquests, but the true
cause that set in motion the great tide of northern emigration, and
that continued to propel it till it rolled at different periods against
China, Persia, Italy, and even Egypt, was a scarcity of food, a
population extended beyond the means of supporting it.

The absolute population at any one period, in proportion to the extent
of territory, could never be great, on account of the unproductive
nature of some of the regions occupied; but there appears to have been
a most rapid succession of human beings, and as fast as some were mowed
down by the scythe of war or of famine, others rose in increased
numbers to supply their place. Among these bold and improvident
Barbarians, population was probably but little checked, as in modern
states, from a fear of future difficulties. A prevailing hope of
bettering their condition by change of place, a constant expectation of
plunder, a power even, if distressed, of selling their children as
slaves, added to the natural carelessness of the barbaric character,
all conspired to raise a population which remained to be repressed
afterwards by famine or war.

Where there is any inequality of conditions, and among nations of
shepherds this soon takes place, the distress arising from a scarcity
of provisions must fall hardest upon the least fortunate members of the
society. This distress also must frequently have been felt by the
women, exposed to casual plunder in the absence of their husbands, and
subject to continual disappointments in their expected return.

But without knowing enough of the minute and intimate history of these
people, to point out precisely on what part the distress for want of
food chiefly fell, and to what extent it was generally felt, I think we
may fairly say, from all the accounts that we have of nations of
shepherds, that population invariably increased among them whenever, by
emigration or any other cause, the means of subsistence were increased,
and that a further population was checked, and the actual population
kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice.

For, independently of any vicious customs that might have prevailed
amongst them with regard to women, which always operate as checks to
population, it must be acknowledged, I think, that the commission of
war is vice, and the effect of it misery, and none can doubt the misery
of want of food.




CHAPTER 4

State of civilized nations--Probability that Europe is much more
populous now than in the time of Julius Caesar--Best criterion of
population--Probable error of Hume in one the criterions that he
proposes as assisting in an estimate of population--Slow increase of
population at present in most of the states of Europe--The two
principal checks to population--The first, or preventive check examined
with regard to England.


In examining the next state of mankind with relation to the question
before us, the state of mixed pasture and tillage, in which with some
variation in the proportions the most civilized nations must always
remain, we shall be assisted in our review by what we daily see around
us, by actual experience, by facts that come within the scope of every
man's observation.

Notwithstanding the exaggerations of some old historians, there can
remain no doubt in the mind of any thinking man that the population of
the principal countries of Europe, France, England, Germany, Russia,
Poland, Sweden, and Denmark is much greater than ever it was in former
times. The obvious reason of these exaggerations is the formidable
aspect that even a thinly peopled nation must have, when collected
together and moving all at once in search of fresh seats. If to this
tremendous appearance be added a succession at certain intervals of
similar emigrations, we shall not be much surprised that the fears of
the timid nations of the South represented the North as a region
absolutely swarming with human beings. A nearer and juster view of the
subject at present enables us to see that the inference was as absurd
as if a man in this country, who was continually meeting on the road
droves of cattle from Wales and the North, was immediately to conclude
that these countries were the most productive of all the parts of the
kingdom.

The reason that the greater part of Europe is more populous now than it
was in former times, is that the industry of the inhabitants has made
these countries produce a greater quantity of human subsistence. For I
conceive that it may be laid down as a position not to be controverted,
that, taking a sufficient extent of territory to include within it
exportation and importation, and allowing some variation for the
prevalence of luxury, or of frugal habits, that population constantly
bears a regular proportion to the food that the earth is made to
produce. In the controversy concerning the populousness of ancient and
modern nations, could it be clearly ascertained that the average
produce of the countries in question, taken altogether, is greater now
than it was in the times of Julius Caesar, the dispute would be at once
determined.

When we are assured that China is the most fertile country in the
world, that almost all the land is in tillage, and that a great part of
it bears two crops every year, and further, that the people live very
frugally, we may infer with certainty that the population must be
immense, without busying ourselves in inquiries into the manners and
habits of the lower classes and the encouragements to early marriages.
But these inquiries are of the utmost importance, and a minute history
of the customs of the lower Chinese would be of the greatest use in
ascertaining in what manner the checks to a further population operate;
what are the vices, and what are the distresses that prevent an
increase of numbers beyond the ability of the country to support.

Hume, in his essay on the populousness of ancient and modern nations,
when he intermingles, as he says, an inquiry concerning causes with
that concerning facts, does not seem to see with his usual penetration
how very little some of the causes he alludes to could enable him to
form any judgement of the actual population of ancient nations. If any
inference can be drawn from them, perhaps it should be directly the
reverse of what Hume draws, though I certainly ought to speak with
great diffidence in dissenting from a man who of all others on such
subjects was the least likely to be deceived by first appearances. If I
find that at a certain period in ancient history, the encouragements to
have a family were great, that early marriages were consequently very
prevalent, and that few persons remained single, I should infer with
certainty that population was rapidly increasing, but by no means that
it was then actually very great, rather; indeed, the contrary, that it
was then thin and that there was room and food for a much greater
number. On the other hand, if I find that at this period the
difficulties attending a family were very great, that, consequently,
few early marriages took place, and that a great number of both sexes
remained single, I infer with certainty that population was at a stand,
and, probably, because the actual population was very great in
proportion to the fertility of the land and that there was scarcely
room and food for more. The number of footmen, housemaids, and other
persons remaining unmarried in modern states, Hume allows to be rather
an argument against their population. I should rather draw a contrary
inference and consider it an argument of their fullness, though this
inference is not certain, because there are many thinly inhabited
states that are yet stationary in their population. To speak,
therefore, correctly, perhaps it may be said that the number of
unmarried persons in proportion to the whole number, existing at
different periods, in the same or different states will enable us to
judge whether population at these periods was increasing, stationary,
or decreasing, but will form no criterion by which we can determine the
actual population.

There is, however, a circumstance taken notice of in most of the
accounts we have of China that it seems difficult to reconcile with
this reasoning. It is said that early marriages very generally prevail
through all the ranks of the Chinese. Yet Dr Adam Smith supposes that
population in China is stationary. These two circumstances appear to be
irreconcilable. It certainly seems very little probable that the
population of China is fast increasing. Every acre of land has been so
long in cultivation that we can hardly conceive there is any great
yearly addition to the average produce. The fact, perhaps, of the
universality of early marriages may not be sufficiently ascertained. If
it be supposed true, the only way of accounting for the difficulty,
with our present knowledge of the subject, appears to be that the
redundant population, necessarily occasioned by the prevalence of early
marriages, must be repressed by occasional famines, and by the custom
of exposing children, which, in times of distress, is probably more
frequent than is ever acknowledged to Europeans. Relative to this
barbarous practice, it is difficult to avoid remarking, that there
cannot be a stronger proof of the distresses that have been felt by
mankind for want of food, than the existence of a custom that thus
violates the most natural principle of the human heart. It appears to
have been very general among ancient nations, and certainly tended
rather to increase population.

In examining the principal states of modern Europe, we shall find that
though they have increased very considerably in population since they
were nations of shepherds, yet that at present their progress is but
slow, and instead of doubling their numbers every twenty-five years
they require three or four hundred years, or more, for that purpose.
Some, indeed, may be absolutely stationary, and others even retrograde.
The cause of this slow progress in population cannot be traced to a
decay of the passion between the sexes. We have sufficient reason to
think that this natural propensity exists still in undiminished vigour.
Why then do not its effects appear in a rapid increase of the human
species? An intimate view of the state of society in any one country in
Europe, which may serve equally for all, will enable us to answer this
question, and to say that a foresight of the difficulties attending the
rearing of a family acts as a preventive check, and the actual
distresses of some of the lower classes, by which they are disabled
from giving the proper food and attention to their children, act as a
positive check to the natural increase of population.

England, as one of the most flourishing states of Europe, may be fairly
taken for an example, and the observations made will apply with but
little variation to any other country where the population increases
slowly.

The preventive check appears to operate in some degree through all the
ranks of society in England. There are some men, even in the highest
rank, who are prevented from marrying by the idea of the expenses that
they must retrench, and the fancied pleasures that they must deprive
themselves of, on the supposition of having a family. These
considerations are certainly trivial, but a preventive foresight of
this kind has objects of much greater weight for its contemplation as
we go lower.

A man of liberal education, but with an income only just sufficient to
enable him to associate in the rank of gentlemen, must feel absolutely
certain that if he marries and has a family he shall be obliged, if he
mixes at all in society, to rank himself with moderate farmers and the
lower class of tradesmen. The woman that a man of education would
naturally make the object of his choice would be one brought up in the
same tastes and sentiments with himself and used to the familiar
intercourse of a society totally different from that to which she must
be reduced by marriage. Can a man consent to place the object of his
affection in a situation so discordant, probably, to her tastes and
inclinations? Two or three steps of descent in society, particularly at
this round of the ladder, where education ends and ignorance begins,
will not be considered by the generality of people as a fancied and
chimerical, but a real and essential evil. If society be held
desirable, it surely must be free, equal, and reciprocal society, where
benefits are conferred as well as received, and not such as the
dependent finds with his patron or the poor with the rich.

These considerations undoubtedly prevent a great number in this rank of
life from following the bent of their inclinations in an early
attachment. Others, guided either by a stronger passion, or a weaker
judgement, break through these restraints, and it would be hard indeed,
if the gratification of so delightful a passion as virtuous love, did
not, sometimes, more than counterbalance all its attendant evils. But I
fear it must be owned that the more general consequences of such
marriages are rather calculated to justify than to repress the
forebodings of the prudent.

The sons of tradesmen and farmers are exhorted not to marry, and
generally find it necessary to pursue this advice till they are settled
in some business or farm that may enable them to support a family.
These events may not, perhaps, occur till they are far advanced in
life. The scarcity of farms is a very general complaint in England. And
the competition in every kind of business is so great that it is not
possible that all should be successful.

The labourer who earns eighteen pence a day and lives with some degree
of comfort as a single man, will hesitate a little before he divides
that pittance among four or five, which seems to be but just sufficient
for one. Harder fare and harder labour he would submit to for the sake
of living with the woman that he loves, but he must feel conscious, if
he thinks at all, that should he have a large family, and any ill luck
whatever, no degree of frugality, no possible exertion of his manual
strength could preserve him from the heart-rending sensation of seeing
his children starve, or of forfeiting his independence, and being
obliged to the parish for their support. The love of independence is a
sentiment that surely none would wish to be erased from the breast of
man, though the parish law of England, it must be confessed, is a
system of all others the most calculated gradually to weaken this
sentiment, and in the end may eradicate it completely.

The servants who live in gentlemen's families have restraints that are
yet stronger to break through in venturing upon marriage. They possess
the necessaries, and even the comforts of life, almost in as great
plenty as their masters. Their work is easy and their food luxurious
compared with the class of labourers. And their sense of dependence is
weakened by the conscious power of changing their masters, if they feel
themselves offended. Thus comfortably situated at present, what are
their prospects in marrying? Without knowledge or capital, either for
business, or farming, and unused and therefore unable, to earn a
subsistence by daily labour, their only refuge seems to be a miserable
ale-house, which certainly offers no very enchanting prospect of a
happy evening to their lives. By much the greater part, therefore,
deterred by this uninviting view of their future situation, content
themselves with remaining single where they are.

If this sketch of the state of society in England be near the truth,
and I do not conceive that it is exaggerated, it will be allowed that
the preventive check to population in this country operates, though
with varied force, through all the classes of the community. The same
observation will hold true with regard to all old states. The effects,
indeed, of these restraints upon marriage are but too conspicuous in
the consequent vices that are produced in almost every part of the
world, vices that are continually involving both sexes in inextricable
unhappiness.




CHAPTER 5

The second, or positive check to population examined, in England--The
true cause why the immense sum collected in England for the poor does
not better their condition--The powerful tendency of the poor laws to
defeat their own purpose--Palliative of the distresses of the poor
proposed--The absolute impossibility, from the fixed laws of our
nature, that the pressure of want can ever be completely removed from
the lower classes of society--All the checks to population may be
resolved into misery or vice.


The positive check to population, by which I mean the check that
represses an increase which is already begun, is confined chiefly,
though not perhaps solely, to the lowest orders of society.

This check is not so obvious to common view as the other I have
mentioned, and, to prove distinctly the force and extent of its
operation would require, perhaps, more data than we are in possession
of. But I believe it has been very generally remarked by those who have
attended to bills of mortality that of the number of children who die
annually, much too great a proportion belongs to those who may be
supposed unable to give their offspring proper food and attention,
exposed as they are occasionally to severe distress and confined,
perhaps, to unwholesome habitations and hard labour. This mortality
among the children of the poor has been constantly taken notice of in
all towns. It certainly does not prevail in an equal degree in the
country, but the subject has not hitherto received sufficient attention
to enable anyone to say that there are not more deaths in proportion
among the children of the poor, even in the country, than among those
of the middling and higher classes. Indeed, it seems difficult to
suppose that a labourer's wife who has six children, and who is
sometimes in absolute want of bread, should be able always to give them
the food and attention necessary to support life. The sons and
daughters of peasants will not be found such rosy cherubs in real life
as they are described to be in romances. It cannot fail to be remarked
by those who live much in the country that the sons of labourers are
very apt to be stunted in their growth, and are a long while arriving
at maturity. Boys that you would guess to be fourteen or fifteen are,
upon inquiry, frequently found to be eighteen or nineteen. And the lads
who drive plough, which must certainly be a healthy exercise, are very
rarely seen with any appearance of calves to their legs: a circumstance
which can only be attributed to a want either of proper or of
sufficient nourishment.

To remedy the frequent distresses of the common people, the poor laws
of England have been instituted; but it is to be feared, that though
they may have alleviated a little the intensity of individual
misfortune, they have spread the general evil over a much larger
surface. It is a subject often started in conversation and mentioned
always as a matter of great surprise that, notwithstanding the immense
sum that is annually collected for the poor in England, there is still
so much distress among them. Some think that the money must be
embezzled, others that the church-wardens and overseers consume the
greater part of it in dinners. All agree that somehow or other it must
be very ill-managed. In short the fact that nearly three millions are
collected annually for the poor and yet that their distresses are not
removed is the subject of continual astonishment. But a man who sees a
little below the surface of things would be very much more astonished
if the fact were otherwise than it is observed to be, or even if a
collection universally of eighteen shillings in the pound, instead of
four, were materially to alter it. I will state a case which I hope
will elucidate my meaning.

Suppose that by a subscription of the rich the eighteen pence a day
which men earn now was made up five shillings, it might be imagined,
perhaps, that they would then be able to live comfortably and have a
piece of meat every day for their dinners. But this would be a very
false conclusion. The transfer of three shillings and sixpence a day to
every labourer would not increase the quantity of meat in the country.
There is not at present enough for all to have a decent share. What
would then be the consequence? The competition among the buyers in the
market of meat would rapidly raise the price from sixpence or
sevenpence, to two or three shillings in the pound, and the commodity
would not be divided among many more than it is at present. When an
article is scarce, and cannot be distributed to all, he that can shew
the most valid patent, that is, he that offers most money, becomes the
possessor. If we can suppose the competition among the buyers of meat
to continue long enough for a greater number of cattle to be reared
annually, this could only be done at the expense of the corn, which
would be a very disadvantagous exchange, for it is well known that the
country could not then support the same population, and when
subsistence is scarce in proportion to the number of people, it is of
little consequence whether the lowest members of the society possess
eighteen pence or five shillings. They must at all events be reduced to
live upon the hardest fare and in the smallest quantity.

It will be said, perhaps, that the increased number of purchasers in
every article would give a spur to productive industry and that the
whole produce of the island would be increased. This might in some
degree be the case. But the spur that these fancied riches would give
to population would more than counterbalance it, and the increased
produce would be to be divided among a more than proportionably
increased number of people. All this time I am supposing that the same
quantity of work would be done as before. But this would not really
take place. The receipt of five shillings a day, instead of eighteen
pence, would make every man fancy himself comparatively rich and able
to indulge himself in many hours or days of leisure. This would give a
strong and immediate check to productive industry, and, in a short
time, not only the nation would be poorer, but the lower classes
themselves would be much more distressed than when they received only
eighteen pence a day.

A collection from the rich of eighteen shillings in the pound, even if
distributed in the most judicious manner, would have a little the same
effect as that resulting from the supposition I have just made, and no
possible contributions or sacrifices of the rich, particularly in
money, could for any time prevent the recurrence of distress among the
lower members of society, whoever they were. Great changes might,
indeed, be made. The rich might become poor, and some of the poor rich,
but a part of the society must necessarily feel a difficulty of living,
and this difficulty will naturally fall on the least fortunate members.

It may at first appear strange, but I believe it is true, that I cannot
by means of money raise a poor man and enable him to live much better
than he did before, without proportionably depressing others in the
same class. If I retrench the quantity of food consumed in my house,
and give him what I have cut off, I then benefit him, without
depressing any but myself and family, who, perhaps, may be well able to
bear it. If I turn up a piece of uncultivated land, and give him the
produce, I then benefit both him and all the members of the society,
because what he before consumed is thrown into the common stock, and
probably some of the new produce with it. But if I only give him money,
supposing the produce of the country to remain the same, I give him a
title to a larger share of that produce than formerly, which share he
cannot receive without diminishing the shares of others. It is evident
that this effect, in individual instances, must be so small as to be
totally imperceptible; but still it must exist, as many other effects
do, which, like some of the insects that people the air, elude our
grosser perceptions.

Supposing the quantity of food in any country to remain the same for
many years together, it is evident that this food must be divided
according to the value of each man's patent, or the sum of money that
he can afford to spend on this commodity so universally in request. (Mr
Godwin calls the wealth that a man receives from his ancestors a mouldy
patent. It may, I think, very properly be termed a patent, but I hardly
see the propriety of calling it a mouldy one, as it is an article in
such constant use.) It is a demonstrative truth, therefore, that the
patents of one set of men could not be increased in value without
diminishing the value of the patents of some other set of men. If the
rich were to subscribe and give five shillings a day to five hundred
thousand men without retrenching their own tables, no doubt can exist,
that as these men would naturally live more at their ease and consume a
greater quantity of provisions, there would be less food remaining to
divide among the rest, and consequently each man's patent would be
diminished in value or the same number of pieces of silver would
purchase a smaller quantity of subsistence.

An increase of population without a proportional increase of food will
evidently have the same effect in lowering the value of each man's
patent. The food must necessarily be distributed in smaller quantities,
and consequently a day's labour will purchase a smaller quantity of
provisions. An increase in the price of provisions would arise either
from an increase of population faster than the means of subsistence, or
from a different distribution of the money of the society. The food of
a country that has been long occupied, if it be increasing, increases
slowly and regularly and cannot be made to answer any sudden demands,
but variations in the distribution of the money of a society are not
infrequently occurring, and are undoubtedly among the causes that
occasion the continual variations which we observe in the price of
provisions.

The poor laws of England tend to depress the general condition of the
poor in these two ways. Their first obvious tendency is to increase
population without increasing the food for its support. A poor man may
marry with little or no prospect of being able to support a family in
independence. They may be said therefore in some measure to create the
poor which they maintain, and as the provisions of the country must, in
consequence of the increased population, be distributed to every man in
smaller proportions, it is evident that the labour of those who are not
supported by parish assistance will purchase a smaller quantity of
provisions than before and consequently more of them must be driven to
ask for support.

Secondly, the quantity of provisions consumed in workhouses upon a part
of the society that cannot in general be considered as the most
valuable part diminishes the shares that would otherwise belong to more
industrious and more worthy members, and thus in the same manner forces
more to become dependent. If the poor in the workhouses were to live
better than they now do, this new distribution of the money of the
society would tend more conspicuously to depress the condition of those
out of the workhouses by occasioning a rise in the price of provisions.

Fortunately for England, a spirit of independence still remains among
the peasantry. The poor laws are strongly calculated to eradicate this
spirit. They have succeeded in part, but had they succeeded as
completely as might have been expected their pernicious tendency would
not have been so long concealed.

Hard as it may appear in individual instances, dependent poverty ought
to be held disgraceful. Such a stimulus seems to be absolutely
necessary to promote the happiness of the great mass of mankind, and
every general attempt to weaken this stimulus, however benevolent its
apparent intention, will always defeat its own purpose. If men are
induced to marry from a prospect of parish provision, with little or no
chance of maintaining their families in independence, they are not only
unjustly tempted to bring unhappiness and dependence upon themselves
and children, but they are tempted, without knowing it, to injure all
in the same class with themselves. A labourer who marries without being
able to support a family may in some respects be considered as an enemy
to all his fellow-labourers.

I feel no doubt whatever that the parish laws of England have
contributed to raise the price of provisions and to lower the real
price of labour. They have therefore contributed to impoverish that
class of people whose only possession is their labour. It is also
difficult to suppose that they have not powerfully contributed to
generate that carelessness and want of frugality observable among the
poor, so contrary to the disposition frequently to be remarked among
petty tradesmen and small farmers. The labouring poor, to use a vulgar
expression, seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants
employ their whole attention, and they seldom think of the future. Even
when they have an opportunity of saving they seldom exercise it, but
all that is beyond their present necessities goes, generally speaking,
to the ale-house. The poor laws of England may therefore be said to
diminish both the power and the will to save among the common people,
and thus to weaken one of the strongest incentives to sobriety and
industry, and consequently to happiness.

It is a general complaint among master manufacturers that high wages
ruin all their workmen, but it is difficult to conceive that these men
would not save a part of their high wages for the future support of
their families, instead of spending it in drunkenness and dissipation,
if they did not rely on parish assistance for support in case of
accidents. And that the poor employed in manufactures consider this
assistance as a reason why they may spend all the wages they earn and
enjoy themselves while they can appears to be evident from the number
of families that, upon the failure of any great manufactory,
immediately fall upon the parish, when perhaps the wages earned in this
manufactory while it flourished were sufficiently above the price of
common country labour to have allowed them to save enough for their
support till they could find some other channel for their industry.

A man who might not be deterred from going to the ale-house from the
consideration that on his death, or sickness, he should leave his wife
and family upon the parish might yet hesitate in thus dissipating his
earnings if he were assured that, in either of these cases, his family
must starve or be left to the support of casual bounty. In China, where
the real as well as nominal price of labour is very low, sons are yet
obliged by law to support their aged and helpless parents. Whether such
a law would be advisable in this country I will not pretend to
determine. But it seems at any rate highly improper, by positive
institutions, which render dependent poverty so general, to weaken that
disgrace, which for the best and most humane reasons ought to attach to
it.

The mass of happiness among the common people cannot but be diminished
when one of the strongest checks to idleness and dissipation is thus
removed, and when men are thus allured to marry with little or no
prospect of being able to maintain a family in independence. Every
obstacle in the way of marriage must undoubtedly be considered as a
species of unhappiness. But as from the laws of our nature some check
to population must exist, it is better that it should be checked from a
foresight of the difficulties attending a family and the fear of
dependent poverty than that it should be encouraged, only to be
repressed afterwards by want and sickness.

It should be remembered always that there is an essential difference
between food and those wrought commodities, the raw materials of which
are in great plenty. A demand for these last will not fail to create
them in as great a quantity as they are wanted. The demand for food has
by no means the same creative power. In a country where all the fertile
spots have been seized, high offers are necessary to encourage the
farmer to lay his dressing on land from which he cannot expect a
profitable return for some years. And before the prospect of advantage
is sufficiently great to encourage this sort of agricultural
enterprise, and while the new produce is rising, great distresses may
be suffered from the want of it. The demand for an increased quantity
of subsistence is, with few exceptions, constant everywhere, yet we see
how slowly it is answered in all those countries that have been long
occupied.

The poor laws of England were undoubtedly instituted for the most
benevolent purpose, but there is great reason to think that they have
not succeeded in their intention. They certainly mitigate some cases of
very severe distress which might otherwise occur, yet the state of the
poor who are supported by parishes, considered in all its
circumstances, is very far from being free from misery. But one of the
principal objections to them is that for this assistance which some of
the poor receive, in itself almost a doubtful blessing, the whole class
of the common people of England is subjected to a set of grating,
inconvenient, and tyrannical laws, totally inconsistent with the
genuine spirit of the constitution. The whole business of settlements,
even in its present amended state, is utterly contradictory to all
ideas of freedom. The parish persecution of men whose families are
likely to become chargeable, and of poor women who are near lying-in,
is a most disgraceful and disgusting tyranny. And the obstructions
continuity occasioned in the market of labour by these laws have a
constant tendency to add to the difficulties of those who are
struggling to support themselves without assistance.

These evils attendant on the poor laws are in some degree irremediable.
If assistance be to be distributed to a certain class of people, a
power must be given somewhere of discriminating the proper objects and
of managing the concerns of the institutions that are necessary, but
any great interference with the affairs of other people is a species of
tyranny, and in the common course of things the exercise of this power
may be expected to become grating to those who are driven to ask for
support. The tyranny of Justices, Church-wardens, and Overseers, is a
common complaint among the poor, but the fault does not lie so much in
these persons, who probably, before they were in power, were not worse
than other people, but in the nature of all such institutions.

The evil is perhaps gone too far to be remedied, but I feel little
doubt in my own mind that if the poor laws had never existed, though
there might have been a few more instances of very severe distress, yet
that the aggregate mass of happiness among the common people would have
been much greater than it is at present.

Mr Pitt's Poor Bill has the appearance of being framed with benevolent
intentions, and the clamour raised against it was in many respects ill
directed, and unreasonable. But it must be confessed that it possesses
in a high degree the great and radical defect of all systems of the
kind, that of tending to increase population without increasing the
means for its support, and thus to depress the condition of those that
are not supported by parishes, and, consequently, to create more poor.

To remove the wants of the lower classes of society is indeed an
arduous task. The truth is that the pressure of distress on this part
of a community is an evil so deeply seated that no human ingenuity can
reach it. Were I to propose a palliative, and palliatives are all that
the nature of the case will admit, it should be, in the first place,
the total abolition of all the present parish-laws. This would at any
rate give liberty and freedom of action to the peasantry of England,
which they can hardly be said to possess at present. They would then be
able to settle without interruption, wherever there was a prospect of a
greater plenty of work and a higher price for labour. The market of
labour would then be free, and those obstacles removed which, as things
are now, often for a considerable time prevent the price from rising
according to the demand.

Secondly, premiums might be given for turning up fresh land, and it
possible encouragements held out to agriculture above manufactures, and
to tillage above grazing. Every endeavour should be used to weaken and
destroy all those institutions relating to corporations,
apprenticeships, etc., which cause the labours of agriculture to be
worse paid than the labours of trade and manufactures. For a country
can never produce its proper quantity of food while these distinctions
remain in favour of artisans. Such encouragements to agriculture would
tend to furnish the market with an increasing quantity of healthy work,
and at the same time, by augmenting the produce of the country, would
raise the comparative price of labour and ameliorate the condition of
the labourer. Being now in better circumstances, and seeing no prospect
of parish assistance, he would be more able, as well as more inclined,
to enter into associations for providing against the sickness of
himself or family.

Lastly, for cases of extreme distress, county workhouses might be
established, supported by rates upon the whole kingdom, and free for
persons of all counties, and indeed of all nations. The fare should be
hard, and those that were able obliged to work. It would be desirable
that they should not be considered as comfortable asylums in all
difficulties, but merely as places where severe distress might find
some alleviation. A part of these houses might be separated, or others
built for a most beneficial purpose, which has not been infrequently
taken notice of, that of providing a place where any person, whether
native or foreigner, might do a day's work at all times and receive the
market price for it. Many cases would undoubtedly be left for the
exertion of individual benevolence.

A plan of this kind, the preliminary of which should be an abolition of
all the present parish laws, seems to be the best calculated to
increase the mass of happiness among the common people of England. To
prevent the recurrence of misery, is, alas! beyond the power of man. In
the vain endeavour to attain what in the nature of things is
impossible, we now sacrifice not only possible but certain benefits. We
tell the common people that if they will submit to a code of tyrannical
regulations, they shall never be in want. They do submit to these
regulations. They perform their part of the contract, but we do not,
nay cannot, perform ours, and thus the poor sacrifice the valuable
blessing of liberty and receive nothing that can be called an
equivalent in return.

Notwithstanding, then, the institution of the poor laws in England, I
think it will be allowed that considering the state of the lower
classes altogether, both in the towns and in the country, the
distresses which they suffer from the want of proper and sufficient
food, from hard labour and unwholesome habitations, must operate as a
constant check to incipient population.

To these two great checks to population, in all long occupied
countries, which I have called the preventive and the positive checks,
may be added vicious customs with respect to women, great cities,
unwholesome manufactures, luxury, pestilence, and war.

All these checks may be fairly resolved into misery and vice. And that
these are the true causes of the slow increase of population in all the
states of modern Europe, will appear sufficiently evident from the
comparatively rapid increase that has invariably taken place whenever
these causes have been in any considerable degree removed.




CHAPTER 6

New colonies--Reasons for their rapid increase--North American
Colonies--Extraordinary instance of increase in the back
settlements--Rapidity with which even old states recover the ravages of
war, pestilence, famine, or the convulsions of nature.


It has been universally remarked that all new colonies settled in
healthy countries, where there was plenty of room and food, have
constantly increased with astonishing rapidity in their population.
Some of the colonies from ancient Greece, in no very long period, more
than equalled their parent states in numbers and strength. And not to
dwell on remote instances, the European settlements in the new world
bear ample testimony to the truth of a remark, which, indeed, has
never, that I know of, been doubted. A plenty of rich land, to be had
for little or nothing, is so powerful a cause of population as to
overcome all other obstacles. No settlements could well have been worse
managed than those of Spain in Mexico, Peru, and Quito. The tyranny,
superstition, and vices of the mother-country were introduced in ample
quantities among her children. Exorbitant taxes were exacted by the
Crown. The most arbitrary restrictions were imposed on their trade. And
the governors were not behind hand in rapacity and extortion for
themselves as well as their master. Yet, under all these difficulties,
the colonies made a quick progress in population. The city of Lima,
founded since the conquest, is represented by Ulloa as containing fifty
thousand inhabitants near fifty years ago. Quito, which had been but a
hamlet of indians, is represented by the same author as in his time
equally populous. Mexico is said to contain a hundred thousand
inhabitants, which, notwithstanding the exaggerations of the Spanish
writers, is supposed to be five times greater than what it contained in
the time of Montezuma.

In the Portuguese colony of Brazil, governed with almost equal tyranny,
there were supposed to be, thirty years since, six hundred thousand
inhabitants of European extraction.

The Dutch and French colonies, though under the government of exclusive
companies of merchants, which, as Dr Adam Smith says very justly, is
the worst of all possible governments, still persisted in thriving
under every disadvantage.

But the English North American colonies, now the powerful people of the
United States of America, made by far the most rapid progress. To the
plenty of good land which they possessed in common with the Spanish and
Portuguese settlements, they added a greater degree of liberty and
equality. Though not without some restrictions on their foreign
commerce, they were allowed a perfect liberty of managing their own
internal affairs. The political institutions that prevailed were
favourable to the alienation and division of property. Lands that were
not cultivated by the proprietor within a limited time were declared
grantable to any other person. In Pennsylvania there was no right of
primogeniture, and in the provinces of New England the eldest had only
a double share. There were no tithes in any of the States, and scarcely
any taxes. And on account of the extreme cheapness of good land a
capital could not be more advantageously employed than in agriculture,
which at the same time that it supplies the greatest quantity of
healthy work affords much the most valuable produce to the society.

The consequence of these favourable circumstances united was a rapidity
of increase probably without parallel in history. Throughout all the
northern colonies, the population was found to double itself in
twenty-five years. The original number of persons who had settled in
the four provinces of new England in 1643 was 21,200.(I take these
figures from Dr Price's two volumes of Observations; not having Dr
Styles' pamphlet, from which he quotes, by me.) Afterwards, it is
supposed that more left them than went to them. In the year 1760, they
were increased to half a million. They had therefore all along doubled
their own number in twenty-five years. In New Jersey the period of
doubling appeared to be twenty-two years; and in Rhode island still
less. In the back settlements, where the inhabitants applied themselves
solely to agriculture, and luxury was not known, they were found to
double their own number in fifteen years, a most extraordinary instance
of increase. Along the sea coast, which would naturally be first
inhabited, the period of doubling was about thirty-five years; and in
some of the maritime towns, the population was absolutely at a stand.

(In instances of this kind the powers of the earth appear to be fully
equal to answer it the demands for food that can be made upon it by
man. But we should be led into an error if we were thence to suppose
that population and food ever really increase in the same ratio. The
one is still a geometrical and the other an arithmetical ratio, that
is, one increases by multiplication, and the other by addition. Where
there are few people, and a great quantity of fertile land, the power
of the earth to afford a yearly increase of food may be compared to a
great reservoir of water, supplied by a moderate stream. The faster
population increases, the more help will be got to draw off the water,
and consequently an increasing quantity will be taken every year. But
the sooner, undoubtedly, will the reservoir be exhausted, and the
streams only remain. When acre has been added to acre, till all the
fertile land is occupied, the yearly increase of food will depend upon
the amelioration of the land already in possession; and even this
moderate stream will be gradually diminishing. But population, could it
be supplied with food, would go on with unexhausted vigour, and the
increase of one period would furnish the power of a greater increase
the next, and this without any limit.)

These facts seem to shew that population increases exactly in the
proportion that the two great checks to it, misery and vice, are
removed, and that there is not a truer criterion of the happiness and
innocence of a people than the rapidity of their increase. The
unwholesomeness of towns, to which some persons are necessarily driven
from the nature of their trades, must be considered as a species of
misery, and every the slightest check to marriage, from a prospect of
the difficulty of maintaining a family, may be fairly classed under the
same head. In short it is difficult to conceive any check to population
which does not come under the description of some species of misery or
vice.

The population of the thirteen American States before the war was
reckoned at about three millions. Nobody imagines that Great Britain is
less populous at present for the emigration of the small parent stock
that produced these numbers. On the contrary, a certain degree of
emigration is known to be favourable to the population of the mother
country. It has been particularly remarked that the two Spanish
provinces from which the greatest number of people emigrated to
America, became in consequence more populous. Whatever was the original
number of British emigrants that increased so fast in the North
American Colonies, let us ask, why does not an equal number produce an
equal increase in the same time in Great Britain? The great and obvious
cause to be assigned is the want of room and food, or, in other words,
misery, and that this is a much more powerful cause even than vice
appears sufficiently evident from the rapidity with which even old
states recover the desolations of war, pestilence, or the accidents of
nature. They are then for a short time placed a little in the situation
of new states, and the effect is always answerable to what might be
expected. If the industry of the inhabitants be not destroyed by fear
or tyranny, subsistence will soon increase beyond the wants of the
reduced numbers, and the invariable consequence will be that population
which before, perhaps, was nearly stationary, will begin immediately to
increase.

The fertile province of Flanders, which has been so often the seat of
the most destructive wars, after a respite of a few years, has appeared
always as fruitful and as populous as ever. Even the Palatinate lifted
up its head again after the execrable ravages of Louis the Fourteenth.
The effects of the dreadful plague in London in 1666 were not
perceptible fifteen or twenty years afterwards. The traces of the most
destructive famines in China and Indostan are by all accounts very soon
obliterated. It may even be doubted whether Turkey and Egypt are upon
an average much less populous for the plagues that periodically lay
them waste. If the number of people which they contain be less now than
formerly, it is, probably, rather to be attributed to the tyranny and
oppression of the government under which they groan, and the consequent
discouragements to agriculture, than to the loss which they sustain by
the plague. The most tremendous convulsions of nature, such as volcanic
eruptions and earthquakes, if they do not happen so frequently as to
drive away the inhabitants, or to destroy their spirit of industry,
have but a trifling effect on the average population of any state.
Naples, and the country under Vesuvius, are still very populous,
notwithstanding the repeated eruptions of that mountain. And Lisbon and
Lima are now, probably, nearly in the same state with regard to
population as they were before the last earthquakes.




CHAPTER 7

A probable cause of epidemics--Extracts from Mr Suessmilch's
tables--Periodical returns of sickly seasons to be expected in certain
cases--Proportion of births to burials for short periods in any country
an inadequate criterion of the real average increase of
population--Best criterion of a permanent increase of population--Great
frugality of living one of the causes of the famines of China and
Indostan--Evil tendency of one of the clauses in Mr Pitt's Poor
Bill--Only one proper way of encouraging population--Causes of the
Happiness of nations--Famine, the last and most dreadful mode by which
nature represses a redundant population--The three propositions
considered as established.


By great attention to cleanliness, the plague seems at length to be
completely expelled from London. But it is not improbable that among
the secondary causes that produce even sickly seasons and epidemics
ought to be ranked a crowded population and unwholesome and
insufficient food. I have been led to this remark, by looking over some
of the tables of Mr Suessmilch, which Dr Price has extracted in one of
his notes to the postscript on the controversy respecting the
population of England and Wales. They are considered as very correct,
and if such tables were general, they would throw great light on the
different ways by which population is repressed and prevented from
increasing beyond the means of subsistence in any country. I will
extract a part of the tables, with Dr Price's remarks.


  IN THE KINGDOM OF PRUSSIA, AND DUKEDOM OF LITHUANIA

                                              Proportion   Proportion
                   Births  Burials Marriages of Births to of Births to
                                              Marriages     Burials
  10 Yrs to 1702   21,963  14,718   5,928      37 to 10    150 to 100
  5 Yrs to 1716    21,602  11,984   4,968      37 to 10    180 to 100
  5 Yrs to 1756    28,392  19,154   5,599      50 to 10    148 to 100

"N.B. In 1709 and 1710, a pestilence carried off 247,733 of the
inhabitants of this country, and in 1736 and 1737, epidemics prevailed,
which again checked its increase."


It may be remarked, that the greatest proportion of births to burials,
was in the five years after the great pestilence.


  DUCHY OF POMERANIA

                                              Proportion   Proportion
  Annual Average   Births  Burials Marriages of Births to of Births to
                                              Marriages     Burials
  6 yrs to 1702   6,540     4,647   1,810      36 to 10    140 to 100
  6 yrs to 1708   7,455     4,208   1,875      39 to 10    177 to 100
  6 yrs to 1726   8,432     5,627   2,131      39 to 10    150 to 100
  6 yrs to 1756  12,767     9,281   2,957      43 to 10    137 to 100

"In this instance the inhabitants appear to have been almost doubled in
fifty-six years, no very bad epidemics having once interrupted the
increase, but the three years immediately follow ing the last period
(to 1759) were so sickly that the births were sunk to 10,229 and the
burials raised to 15,068."


Is it not probable that in this case the number of inhabitants had
increased faster than the food and the accommodations necessary to
preserve them in health? The mass of the people would, upon this
supposition, be obliged to live harder, and a greater number would be
crowded together in one house, and it is not surely improbable that
these were among the natural causes that produced the three sickly
years. These causes may produce such an effect, though the country,
absolutely considered, may not be extremely crowded and populous. In a
country even thinly inhabited, if an increase of population take place,
before more food is raised, and more houses are built, the inhabitants
must be distressed in some degree for room and subsistence. Were the
marriages in England, for the next eight or ten years, to be more
prolifick than usual, or even were a greater number of marriages than
usual to take place, supposing the number of houses to remain the same,
instead of five or six to a cottage, there must be seven or eight, and
this, added to the necessity of harder living, would probably have a
very unfavourable effect on the health of the common people.


  NEUMARK OF BRANDENBURGH

                                              Proportion   Proportion
  Annual Average   Births  Burials Marriages of Births to of Births to
                                              Marriages    Burials
  5 yrs to 1701    5,433    3,483  1,436      37 to 10    155 to 100
  5 yrs to 1726    7,012    4,254  1,713      40 to 10    164 to 100
  5 yrs to 1756    7,978    5,567  1,891      42 to 10    143 to 100

"Epidemics prevailed for six years, from 1736, to 1741, which checked
the increase."


  DUKEDOM OF MAGDEBURGH

                                              Proportion   Proportion
  Annual Average   Births  Burials Marriages of Births to of Births to
                                              Marriages    Burials
  5 yrs to 1702    6,431   4,103   1,681      38 to 10    156 to 100
  5 yrs to 1717    7,590   5,335   2,076      36 to 10    142 to 100
  5 yrs to 1756    8,850   8,069   2,193      40 to 10    109 to 100

"The years 1738, 1740, 1750, and 1751, were particularly sickly."


For further information on this subject, I refer the reader to Mr
Suessmilch's tables. The extracts that I have made are sufficient to
shew the periodical, though irregular, returns of sickly seasons, and
it seems highly probable that a scantiness of room and food was one of
the principal causes that occasioned them.

It appears from the tables that these countries were increasing rather
fast for old states, notwithstanding the occasional seasons that
prevailed. Cultivation must have been improving, and marriages,
consequently, encouraged. For the checks to population appear to have
been rather of the positive, than of the preventive kind. When from a
prospect of increasing plenty in any country, the weight that represses
population is in some degree removed, it is highly probable that the
motion will be continued beyond the operation of the cause that first
impelled it. Or, to be more particular, when the increasing produce of
a country, and the increasing demand for labour, so far ameliorate the
condition of the labourer as greatly to encourage marriage, it is
probable that the custom of early marriages will continue till the
population of the country has gone beyond the increased produce, and
sickly seasons appear to be the natural and necessary consequence. I
should expect, therefore, that those countries where subsistence was
increasing sufficiency at times to encourage population but not to
answer all its demands, would be more subject to periodical epidemics
than those where the population could more completely accommodate
itself to the average produce.

An observation the converse of this will probably also be found true.
In those countries that are subject to periodical sicknesses, the
increase of population, or the excess of births above the burials, will
be greater in the intervals of these periods than is usual, caeteris
paribus, in the countries not so much subject to such disorders. If
Turkey and Egypt have been nearly stationary in their average
population for the last century, in the intervals of their periodical
plagues, the births must have exceeded the burials in a greater
proportion than in such countries as France and England.

The average proportion of births to burials in any country for a period
of five to ten years, will hence appear to be a very inadequate
criterion by which to judge of its real progress in population. This
proportion certainly shews the rate of increase during those five or
ten years; but we can by no means thence infer what had been the
increase for the twenty years before, or what would be the increase for
the twenty years after. Dr Price observes that Sweden, Norway, Russia,
and the kingdom of Naples, are increasing fast; but the extracts from
registers that he has given are not for periods of sufficient extent to
establish the fact. It is highly probable, however, that Sweden,
Norway, and Russia, are really increasing their population, though not
at the rate that the proportion of births to burials for the short
periods that Dr Price takes would seem to shew. (See Dr Price's
Observations, Vol. ii, postscript to the controversy on the population
of England and Wales.) For five years, ending in 1777, the proportion
of births to burials in the kingdom of Naples was 144 to 100, but there
is reason to suppose that this proportion would indicate an increase
much greater than would be really found to have taken place in that
kingdom during a period of a hundred years.

Dr Short compared the registers of many villages and market towns in
England for two periods; the first, from Queen Elizabeth to the middle
of the last century, and the second, from different years at the end of
the last century to the middle of the present. And from a comparison of
these extracts, it appears that in the former period the births
exceeded the burials in the proportion of 124 to 100, but in the
latter, only in the proportion of 111 to 100. Dr Price thinks that the
registers in the former period are not to be depended upon, but,
probably, in this instance they do not give incorrect proportions. At
least there are many reasons for expecting to find a greater excess of
births above the burials in the former period than in the latter. In
the natural progress of the population of any country, more good land
will, caeteris paribus, be taken into cultivation in the earlier stages
of it than in the later. (I say 'caeteris paribus', because the
increase of the produce of any country will always very greatly depend
on the spirit of industry that prevails, and the way in which it is
directed. The knowledge and habits of the people, and other temporary
causes, particularly the degree of civil liberty and equality existing
at the time, must always have great influence in exciting and directing
this spirit.) And a greater proportional yearly increase of produce
will almost invariably be followed by a greater proportional increase
of population. But, besides this great cause, which would naturally
give the excess of births above burials greater at the end of Queen
Elizabeth's reign than in the middle of the present century, I cannot
help thinking that the occasional ravages of the plague in the former
period must have had some tendency to increase this proportion. If an
average of ten years had been taken in the intervals of the returns of
this dreadful disorder, or if the years of plague had been rejected as
accidental, the registers would certainly give the proportion of births
to burials too high for the real average increase of the population.
For some few years after the great plague in 1666, it is probable that
there was a more than usual excess of births above burials,
particularly if Dr Price's opinion be founded, that England was more
populous at the revolution (which happened only twenty-two years
afterwards) than it is at present.

Mr King, in 1693, stated the proportion of the births to the burials
throughout the Kingdom, exclusive of London, as 115 to 100. Dr Short
makes it, in the middle of the present century, 111 to 100, including
London. The proportion in France for five years, ending in 1774, was
117 to 100. If these statements are near the truth; and if there are no
very great variations at particular periods in the proportions, it
would appear that the population of France and England has accommodated
itself very nearly to the average produce of each country. The
discouragements to marriage, the consequent vicious habits, war,
luxury, the silent though certain depopulation of large towns, and the
close habitations, and insufficient food of many of the poor, prevent
population from increasing beyond the means of subsistence; and, if I
may use an expression which certainly at first appears strange,
supercede the necessity of great and ravaging epidemics to repress what
is redundant. Were a wasting plague to sweep off two millions in
England, and six millions in France, there can be no doubt whatever
that, after the inhabitants had recovered from the dreadful shock, the
proportion of births to burials would be much above what it is in
either country at present.

In New Jersey, the proportion of births to deaths on an average of
seven years, ending in 1743, was as 300 to 100. In France and England,
taking the highest proportion, it is as 117 to 100. Great and
astonishing as this difference is, we ought not to be so wonder-struck
at it as to attribute it to the miraculous interposition of heaven. The
causes of it are not remote, latent and mysterious; but near us, round
about us, and open to the investigation of every inquiring mind. It
accords with the most liberal spirit of philosophy to suppose that not
a stone can fall, or a plant rise, without the immediate agency of
divine power. But we know from experience that these operations of what
we call nature have been conducted almost invariably according to fixed
laws. And since the world began, the causes of population and
depopulation have probably been as constant as any of the laws of
nature with which we are acquainted.

The passion between the sexes has appeared in every age to be so nearly
the same that it may always be considered, in algebraic language, as a
given quantity. The great law of necessity which prevents population
from increasing in any country beyond the food which it can either
produce or acquire, is a law so open to our view, so obvious and
evident to our understandings, and so completely confirmed by the
experience of every age, that we cannot for a moment doubt it. The
different modes which nature takes to prevent or repress a redundant
population do not appear, indeed, to us so certain and regular, but
though we cannot always predict the mode we may with certainty predict
the fact. If the proportion of births to deaths for a few years
indicate an increase of numbers much beyond the proportional increased
or acquired produce of the country, we may be perfectly certain that
unless an emigration takes place, the deaths will shortly exceed the
births; and that the increase that had taken place for a few years
cannot be the real average increase of the population of the country.
Were there no other depopulating causes, every country would, without
doubt, be subject to periodical pestilences or famine.

The only true criterion of a real and permanent increase in the
population of any country is the increase of the means of subsistence.
But even, this criterion is subject to some slight variations which
are, however, completely open to our view and observations. In some
countries population appears to have been forced, that is, the people
have been habituated by degrees to live almost upon the smallest
possible quantity of food. There must have been periods in such
counties when population increased permanently, without an increase in
the means of subsistence. China seems to answer to this description. If
the accounts we have of it are to be trusted, the lower classes of
people are in the habit of living almost upon the smallest possible
quantity of food and are glad to get any putrid offals that European
labourers would rather starve than eat. The law in China which permits
parents to expose their children has tended principally thus to force
the population. A nation in this state must necessarily be subject to
famines. Where a country is so populous in proportion to the means of
subsistence that the average produce of it is but barely sufficient to
support the lives of the inhabitants, any deficiency from the badness
of seasons must be fatal. It is probable that the very frugal manner in
which the Gentoos are in the habit of living contributes in some degree
to the famines of Indostan.

In America, where the reward of labour is at present so liberal, the
lower classes might retrench very considerably in a year of scarcity
without materially distressing themselves. A famine therefore seems to
be almost impossible. It may be expected that in the progress of the
population of America, the labourers will in time be much less
liberally rewarded. The numbers will in this case permanently increase
without a proportional increase in the means of subsistence.

In the different states of Europe there must be some variations in the
proportion between the number of inhabitants and the quantity of food
consumed, arising from the different habits of living that prevail in
each state. The labourers of the South of England are so accustomed to
eat fine wheaten bread that they will suffer themselves to be half
starved before they will submit to live like the Scotch peasants. They
might perhaps in time, by the constant operation of the hard law of
necessity, be reduced to live even like the Lower Chinese, and the
country would then, with the same quantity of food, support a greater
population. But to effect this must always be a most difficult, and,
every friend to humanity will hope, an abortive attempt. Nothing is so
common as to hear of encouragements that ought to be given to
population. If the tendency of mankind to increase be so great as I
have represented it to be, it may appear strange that this increase
does not come when it is thus repeatedly called for. The true reason is
that the demand for a greater population is made without preparing the
funds necessary to support it. Increase the demand for agricultural
labour by promoting cultivation, and with it consequently increase the
produce of the country, and ameliorate the condition of the labourer,
and no apprehensions whatever need be entertained of the proportional
increase of population. An attempt to effect this purpose in any other
way is vicious, cruel, and tyrannical, and in any state of tolerable
freedom cannot therefore succeed. It may appear to be the interest of
the rulers, and the rich of a state, to force population, and thereby
lower the price of labour, and consequently the expense of fleets and
armies, and the cost of manufactures for foreign sale; but every
attempt of the kind should be carefully watched and strenuously
resisted by the friends of the poor, particularly when it comes under
the deceitful garb of benevolence, and is likely, on that account, to
be cheerfully and cordially received by the common people.

I entirely acquit Mr Pitt of any sinister intention in that clause of
his Poor Bill which allows a shilling a week to every labourer for each
child he has above three. I confess, that before the bill was brought
into Parliament, and for some time after, I thought that such a
regulation would be highly beneficial, but further reflection on the
subject has convinced me that if its object be to better the condition
of the poor, it is calculated to defeat the very purpose which it has
in view. It has no tendency that I can discover to increase the produce
of the country, and if it tend to increase the population, without
increasing the produce, the necessary and inevitable consequence
appears to be that the same produce must be divided among a greater
number, and consequently that a day's labour will purchase a smaller
quantity of provisions, and the poor therefore in general must be more
distressed.

I have mentioned some cases where population may permanently increase
without a proportional increase in the means of subsistence. But it is
evident that the variation in different states, between the food and
the numbers supported by it, is restricted to a limit beyond which it
cannot pass. In every country, the population of which is not
absolutely decreasing, the food must be necessarily sufficient to
support, and to continue, the race of labourers.

Other circumstances being the same, it may be affirmed that countries
are populous according to the quantity of human food which they
produce, and happy according to the liberality with which that food is
divided, or the quantity which a day's labour will purchase. Corn
countries are more populous than pasture countries, and rice countries
more populous than corn countries. The lands in England are not suited
to rice, but they would all bear potatoes; and Dr Adam Smith observes
that if potatoes were to become the favourite vegetable food of the
common people, and if the same quantity of land was employed in their
culture as is now employed in the culture of corn, the country would be
able to support a much greater population, and would consequently in a
very short time have it.

The happiness of a country does not depend, absolutely, upon its
poverty or its riches, upon its youth or its age, upon its being thinly
or fully inhabited, but upon the rapidity with which it is increasing,
upon the degree in which the yearly increase of food approaches to the
yearly increase of an unrestricted population. This approximation is
always the nearest in new colonies, where the knowledge and industry of
an old state operate on the fertile unappropriated land of a new one.
In other cases, the youth or the age of a state is not in this respect
of very great importance. It is probable that the food of Great Britain
is divided in as great plenty to the inhabitants, at the present
period, as it was two thousand, three thousand, or four thousand years
ago. And there is reason to believe that the poor and thinly inhabited
tracts of the Scotch Highlands are as much distressed by an overcharged
population as the rich and populous province of Flanders.

Were a country never to be overrun by a people more advanced in arts,
but left to its own natural progress in civilization; from the time
that its produce might be considered as an unit, to the time that it
might be considered as a million, during the lapse of many hundred
years, there would not be a single period when the mass of the people
could be said to be free from distress, either directly or indirectly,
for want of food. In every state in Europe, since we have first had
accounts of it, millions and millions of human existences have been
repressed from this simple cause; though perhaps in some of these
states an absolute famine has never been known.

Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource of nature. The
power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce
subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other
visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able
ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of
destruction; and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should
they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics,
pestilence, and plague, advance in terrific array, and sweep off their
thousands and ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete,
gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow
levels the population with the food of the world.

Must it not then be acknowledged by an attentive examiner of the
histories of mankind, that in every age and in every state in which man
has existed, or does now exist.

That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of
subsistence.

That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence
increase. And that the superior power of population it repressed, and
the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery
and vice?




CHAPTER 8

Mr Wallace--Error of supposing that the difficulty arising from
population is at a great distance--Mr Condorcet's sketch of the
progress of the human mind--Period when the oscillation, mentioned by
Mr Condorcet, ought to be applied to the human race.


To a person who draws the preceding obvious inferences, from a view of
the past and present state of mankind, it cannot but be a matter of
astonishment that all the writers on the perfectibility of man and of
society who have noticed the argument of an overcharged population,
treat it always very slightly and invariably represent the difficulties
arising from it as at a great and almost immeasurable distance. Even Mr
Wallace, who thought the argument itself of so much weight as to
destroy his whole system of equality, did not seem to be aware that any
difficulty would occur from this cause till the whole earth had been
cultivated like a garden and was incapable of any further increase of
produce. Were this really the case, and were a beautiful system of
equality in other respects practicable, I cannot think that our ardour
in the pursuit of such a scheme ought to be damped by the contemplation
of so remote a difficulty. An event at such a distance might fairly be
left to providence, but the truth is that if the view of the argument
given in this Essay be just the difficulty, so far from being remote,
would be 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 mankind, if they were equal. Though the
produce of the earth might be increasing every year, population would
be increasing much faster, and the redundancy must necessarily be
repressed by the periodical or constant action of misery or vice.

Mr Condorcet's Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des Progres de l'Esprit
Humain, was written, it is said, under the pressure of that cruel
proscription which terminated in his death. If he had no hopes of its
being seen during his life and of its interesting France in his favour,
it is a singular instance of the attachment of a man to principles,
which every day's experience was so fatally for himself contradicting.
To see the human mind in one of the most enlightened nations of the
world, and after a lapse of some thousand years, debased by such a
fermentation of disgusting passions, of fear, cruelty, malice, revenge,
ambition, madness, and folly as would have disgraced the most savage
nation in the most barbarous age must have been such a tremendous shock
to his ideas of the necessary and inevitable progress of the human mind
that nothing but the firmest conviction of the truth of his principles,
in spite of all appearances, could have withstood.

This posthumous publication is only a sketch of a much larger work,
which he proposed should be executed. It necessarily, therefore, wants
that detail and application which can alone prove the truth of any
theory. A few observations will be sufficient to shew how completely
the theory is contradicted when it is applied to the real, and not to
an imaginary, state of things.

In the last division of the work, which treats of the future progress
of man towards perfection, he says, that comparing, in the different
civilized nations of Europe, the actual population with the extent of
territory, and observing their cultivation, their industry, their
divisions of labour, and their means of subsistence, we shall see that
it would be impossible to preserve the same means of subsistence, and,
consequently, the same population, without a number of individuals who
have no other means of supplying their wants than their industry.
Having allowed the necessity of such a class of men, and adverting
afterwards to the precarious revenue of those families that would
depend so entirely on the life and health of their chief, he says, very
justly: 'There exists then, a necessary cause of inequality, of
dependence, and even of misery, which menaces, without ceasing, the
most numerous and active class of our societies.' (To save time and
long quotations, I shall here give the substance of some of Mr
Condorcet's sentiments, and hope I shall not misrepresent them. But I
refer the reader to the work itself, which will amuse, if it does not
convince him.) The difficulty is just and well stated, and I am afraid
that the mode by which he proposes it should be removed will be found
inefficacious. By the application of calculations to the probabilities
of life and the interest of money, he proposes that a fund should be
established which should assure to the old an assistance, produced, in
part, by their own former savings, and, in part, by the savings of
individuals who in making the same sacrifice die before they reap the
benefit of it. The same, or a similar fund, should give assistance to
women and children who lose their husbands, or fathers, and afford a
capital to those who were of an age to found a new family, sufficient
for the proper development of their industry. These establishments, he
observes, might be made in the name and under the protection of the
society. Going still further, he says that, by the just application of
calculations, means might be found of more completely preserving a
state of equality, by preventing credit from being the exclusive
privilege of great fortunes, and yet giving it a basis equally solid,
and by rendering the progress of industry, and the activity of
commerce, less dependent on great capitalists.

Such establishments and calculations may appear very promising upon
paper, but when applied to real life they will be found to be
absolutely nugatory. Mr Condorcet allows that a class of people which
maintains itself entirely by industry is necessary to every state. Why
does he allow this? No other reason can well be assigned than that he
conceives that the labour necessary to procure subsistence for an
extended population will not be performed without the goad of
necessity. If by establishments of this kind of spur to industry be
removed, if the idle and the negligent are placed upon the same footing
with regard to their credit, and the future support of their wives and
families, as the active and industrious, can we expect to see men exert
that animated activity in bettering their condition which now forms the
master spring of public prosperity? If an inquisition were to be
established to examine the claims of each individual and to determine
whether he had or had not exerted himself to the utmost, and to grant
or refuse assistance accordingly, this would be little else than a
repetition upon a larger scale of the English poor laws and would be
completely destructive of the true principles of liberty and equality.

But independent of this great objection to these establishments, and
supposing for a moment that they would give no check to productive
industry, by far the greatest difficulty remains yet behind.

Were every man sure of a comfortable provision for his family, almost
every man would have one, and were the rising generation free from the
'killing frost' of misery, population must rapidly increase. Of this Mr
Condorcet seems to be fully aware himself, and after having described
further improvements, he says:

But in this process of industry and happiness, each generation will be
called to more extended enjoyments, and in consequence, by the physical
constitution of the human frame, to an increase in the number of
individuals. Must not there arrive a period then, when these laws,
equally necessary, shall counteract each other? When the increase of
the number of men surpassing their means of subsistence, the necessary
result must be either a continual diminution of happiness and
population, a movement truly retrograde, or, at least, a kind of
oscillation between good and evil? In societies arrived at this term,
will not this oscillation be a constantly subsisting cause of
periodical misery? Will it not mark the limit when all further
amelioration will become impossible, and point out that term to the
perfectibility of the human race which it may reach in the course of
ages, but can never pass?

He then adds,

There is no person who does not see how very distant such a period is
from us, but shall we ever arrive at it? It is equally impossible to
pronounce for or against the future realization of an event which
cannot take place but at an era when the human race will have attained
improvements, of which we can at present scarcely form a conception.

Mr Condorcet's picture of what may be expected to happen when the
number of men shall surpass the means of their subsistence is justly
drawn. The oscillation which he describes will certainly take place and
will without doubt be a constantly subsisting cause of periodical
misery. The only point in which I differ from Mr Condorcet with regard
to this picture is the period when it may be applied to the human race.
Mr Condorcet thinks that it cannot possibly be applicable but at an era
extremely distant. If the proportion between the natural increase of
population and food which I have given be in any degree near the truth,
it will appear, on the contrary, that the period when the number of men
surpass their means of subsistence has long since arrived, and that
this necessity oscillation, this constantly subsisting cause of
periodical misery, has existed ever since we have had any histories of
mankind, does exist at present, and will for ever continue to exist,
unless some decided change take place in the physical constitution of
our nature.

Mr Condorcet, however, goes on to say that should the period, which he
conceives to be so distant, ever arrive, the human race, and the
advocates for the perfectibility of man, need not be alarmed at it. He
then proceeds to remove the difficulty in a manner which I profess not
to understand. Having observed, that the ridiculous prejudices of
superstition would by that time have ceased to throw over morals a
corrupt and degrading austerity, he alludes, either to a promiscuous
concubinage, which would prevent breeding, or to something else as
unnatural. To remove the difficulty in this way will, surely, in the
opinion of most men, be to destroy that virtue and purity of manners,
which the advocates of equality, and of the perfectibility of man,
profess to be the end and object of their views.




CHAPTER 9

Mr Condorcet's conjecture concerning the organic perfectibility of man,
and the indefinite prolongation of human life--Fallacy of the argument,
which infers an unlimited progress from a partial improvement, the
limit of which cannot be ascertained, illustrated in the breeding of
animals, and the cultivation of plants.


The last question which Mr Condorcet proposes for examination is the
organic perfectibility of man. He observes that if the proofs which
have been already given and which, in their development will receive
greater force in the work itself, are sufficient to establish the
indefinite perfectibility of man upon the supposition of the same
natural faculties and the same organization which he has at present,
what will be the certainty, what the extent of our hope, if this
organization, these natural faculties themselves, are susceptible of
amelioration?

From the improvement of medicine, from the use of more wholesome food
and habitations, from a manner of living which will improve the
strength of the body by exercise without impairing it by excess, from
the destruction of the two great causes of the degradation of man,
misery, and too great riches, from the gradual removal of transmissible
and contagious disorders by the improvement of physical knowledge,
rendered more efficacious by the progress of reason and of social
order, he infers that though man will not absolutely become immortal,
yet that the duration between his birth and natural death will increase
without ceasing, will have no assignable term, and may properly be
expressed by the word 'indefinite'. He then defines this word to mean
either a constant approach to an unlimited extent, without ever
reaching it, or an increase. In the immensity of ages to an extent
greater than any assignable quantity.

But surely the application of this term in either of these senses to
the duration of human life is in the highest degree unphilosophical and
totally unwarranted by any appearances in the laws of nature.
Variations from different causes are essentially distinct from a
regular and unretrograde increase. The average duration of human life
will to a certain degree vary from healthy or unhealthy climates, from
wholesome or unwholesome food, from virtuous or vicious manners, and
other causes, but it may be fairly doubted whether there is really the
smallest perceptible advance in the natural duration of human life
since first we have had any authentic history of man. The prejudices of
all ages have indeed been directly contrary to this supposition, and
though I would not lay much stress upon these prejudices, they will in
some measure tend to prove that there has been no marked advance in an
opposite direction.

It may perhaps be said that the world is yet so young, so completely in
its infancy, that it ought not to be expected that any difference
should appear so soon.

If this be the case, there is at once an end of all human science. The
whole train of reasonings from effects to causes will be destroyed. We
may shut our eyes to the book of nature, as it will no longer be of any
use to read it. The wildest and most improbable conjectures may be
advanced with as much certainty as the most just and sublime theories,
founded on careful and reiterated experiments. We may return again to
the old mode of philosophising and make facts bend to systems, instead
of establishing systems upon facts. The grand and consistent theory of
Newton will be placed upon the same footing as the wild and eccentric
hypotheses of Descartes. In short, if the laws of nature are thus
fickle and inconstant, if it can be affirmed and be believed that they
will change, when for ages and ages they have appeared immutable, the
human mind will no longer have any incitements to inquiry, but must
remain fixed in inactive torpor, or amuse itself only in bewildering
dreams and extravagant fancies.

The constancy of the laws of nature and of effects and causes is the
foundation of all human knowledge, though far be it from me to say that
the same power which framed and executes the laws of nature may not
change them all 'in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.'  Such a
change may undoubtedly happen. All that I mean to say is that it is
impossible to infer it from reasoning. If without any previous
observable symptoms or indications of a change, we can infer that a
change will take place, we may as well make any assertion whatever and
think it as unreasonable to be contradicted in affirming that the moon
will come in contact with the earth tomorrow, as in saying that the sun
will rise at its usual time.

With regard to the duration of human life, there does not appear to
have existed from the earliest ages of the world to the present moment
the smallest permanent symptom or indication of increasing
prolongation. The observable effects of climate, habit, diet, and other
causes, on length of life have furnished the pretext for asserting its
indefinite extension; and the sandy foundation on which the argument
rests is that because the limit of human life is undefined; because you
cannot mark its precise term, and say so far exactly shall it go and no
further; that therefore its extent may increase for ever, and be
properly termed indefinite or unlimited. But the fallacy and absurdity
of this argument will sufficiently appear from a slight examination of
what Mr Condorcet calls the organic perfectibility, or degeneration, of
the race of plants and animals, which he says may be regarded as one of
the general laws of nature.

I am told that it is a maxim among the improvers of cattle that you may
breed to any degree of nicety you please, and they found this maxim
upon another, which is that some of the offspring will possess the
desirable qualities of the parents in a greater degree. In the famous
Leicestershire breed of sheep, the object is to procure them with small
heads and small legs. Proceeding upon these breeding maxims, it is
evident that we might go on till the heads and legs were evanescent
quantities, but this is so palpable an absurdity that we may be quite
sure that the premises are not just and that there really is a limit,
though we cannot see it or say exactly where it is. In this case, the
point of the greatest degree of improvement, or the smallest size of
the head and legs, may be said to be undefined, but this is very
different from unlimited, or from indefinite, in Mr Condorcet's
acceptation of the term. Though I may not be able in the present
instance to mark the limit at which further improvement will stop, I
can very easily mention a point at which it will not arrive. I should
not scruple to assert that were the breeding to continue for ever, the
head and legs of these sheep would never be so small as the head and
legs of a rat.

It cannot be true, therefore, that among animals, some of the offspring
will possess the desirable qualities of the parents in a greater
degree, or that animals are indefinitely perfectible.

The progress of a wild plant to a beautiful garden flower is perhaps
more marked and striking than anything that takes place among animals,
yet even here it would be the height of absurdity to assert that the
progress was unlimited or indefinite.

One of the most obvious features of the improvement is the increase of
size. The flower has grown gradually larger by cultivation. If the
progress were really unlimited it might be increased ad infinitum, but
this is so gross an absurdity that we may be quite sure that among
plants as well as among animals there is a limit to improvement, though
we do not exactly know where it is. It is probable that the gardeners
who contend for flower prizes have often applied stronger dressing
without success. At the same time it would be highly presumptuous in
any man to say that he had seen the finest carnation or anemone that
could ever be made to grow. He might however assert without the
smallest chance of being contradicted by a future fact, that no
carnation or anemone could ever by cultivation be increased to the size
of a large cabbage; and yet there are assignable quantities much
greater than a cabbage. No man can say that he has seen the largest ear
of wheat, or the largest oak that could ever grow; but he might easily,
and with perfect certainty, name a point of magnitude at which they
would not arrive. In all these cases therefore, a careful distinction
should be made, between an unlimited progress, and a progress where the
limit is merely undefined.

It will be said, perhaps, that the reason why plants and animals cannot
increase indefinitely in size is, that they would fall by their own
weight. I answer, how do we know this but from experience?--from
experience of the degree of strength with which these bodies are
formed. I know that a carnation, long before it reached the size of a
cabbage, would not be supported by its stalk, but I only know this from
my experience of the weakness and want of tenacity in the materials of
a carnation stalk. There are many substances in nature of the same size
that would support as large a head as a cabbage.

The reasons of the mortality of plants are at present perfectly unknown
to us. No man can say why such a plant is annual, another biennial, and
another endures for ages. The whole affair in all these cases, in
plants, animals, and in the human race, is an affair of experience, and
I only conclude that man is mortal because the invariable experience of
all ages has proved the mortality of those materials of which his
visible body is made:

What can we reason, but from what we know?

Sound philosophy will not authorize me to alter this opinion of the
mortality of man on earth, till it can be clearly proved that the human
race has made, and is making, a decided progress towards an illimitable
extent of life. And the chief reason why I adduced the two particular
instances from animals and plants was to expose and illustrate, if I
could, the fallacy of that argument which infers an unlimited progress,
merely because some partial improvement has taken place, and that the
limit of this improvement cannot be precisely ascertained.

The capacity of improvement in plants and animals, to a certain degree,
no person can possibly doubt. A clear and decided progress has already
been made, and yet, I think, it appears that it would be highly absurd
to say that this progress has no limits. In human life, though there
are great variations from different causes, it may be doubted whether,
since the world began, any organic improvement whatever in the human
frame can be clearly ascertained. The foundations, therefore, on which
the arguments for the organic perfectibility of man rest, are unusually
weak, and can only be considered as mere conjectures. It does not,
however, by any means seem impossible that by an attention to breed, a
certain degree of improvement, similar to that among animals, might
take place among men. Whether intellect could be communicated may be a
matter of doubt: but size, strength, beauty, complexion, and perhaps
even longevity are in a degree transmissible. The error does not seem
to lie in supposing a small degree of improvement possible, but in not
discriminating between a small improvement, the limit of which is
undefined, and an improvement really unlimited. As the human race,
however, could not be improved in this way, without condemning all the
bad specimens to celibacy, it is not probable that an attention to
breed should ever become general; indeed, I know of no well-directed
attempts of this kind, except in the ancient family of the
Bickerstaffs, who are said to have been very successful in whitening
the skins and increasing the height of their race by prudent marriages,
particularly by that very judicious cross with Maud, the milk-maid, by
which some capital defects in the constitutions of the family were
corrected.

It will not be necessary, I think, in order more completely to shew the
improbability of any approach in man towards immortality on earth, to
urge the very great additional weight that an increase in the duration
of life would give to the argument of population.

Many, I doubt not, will think that the attempting gravely to controvert
so absurd a paradox as the immortality of man on earth, or indeed, even
the perfectibility of man and society, is a waste of time and words,
and that such unfounded conjectures are best answered by neglect. I
profess, however, to be of a different opinion. When paradoxes of this
kind are advanced by ingenious and able men, neglect has no tendency to
convince them of their mistakes. Priding themselves on what they
conceive to be a mark of the reach and size of their own
understandings, of the extent and comprehensiveness of their views,
they will look upon this neglect merely as an indication of poverty,
and narrowness, in the mental exertions of their contemporaries, and
only think that the world is not yet prepared to receive their sublime
truths.

On the contrary, a candid investigation of these subjects, accompanied
with a perfect readiness to adopt any theory warranted by sound
philosophy, may have a tendency to convince them that in forming
improbable and unfounded hypotheses, so far from enlarging the bounds
of human science, they are contracting it, so far from promoting the
improvement of the human mind, they are obstructing it; they are
throwing us back again almost into the infancy of knowledge and
weakening the foundations of that mode of philosophising, under the
auspices of which science has of late made such rapid advances. The
present rage for wide and unrestrained speculation seems to be a kind
of mental intoxication, arising, perhaps, from the great and unexpected
discoveries which have been made of late years, in various branches of
science. To men elate and giddy with such successes, every thing
appeared to be within the grasp of human powers; and, under this
illusion, they confounded subjects where no real progress could be
proved with those where the progress had been marked, certain, and
acknowledged. Could they be persuaded to sober themselves with a little
severe and chastised thinking, they would see, that the cause of truth,
and of sound philosophy, cannot but suffer by substituting wild flights
and unsupported assertions for patient investigation, and well
authenticated proofs.

Mr Condorcet's book may be considered not only as a sketch of the
opinions of a celebrated individual, but of many of the literary men in
France at the beginning of the Revolution. As such, though merely a
sketch, it seems worthy of attention.




CHAPTER 10

Mr Godwin's system of equality--Error of attributing all the vices of
mankind to human institutions--Mr Godwin's first answer to the
difficulty arising from population totally insufficient--Mr Godwin's
beautiful system of equality supposed to be realized--Its utter
destruction simply from the principle of population in so short a time
as thirty years.


In reading Mr Godwin's ingenious and able work on political justice, it
is impossible not to be struck with the spirit and energy of his style,
the force and precision of some of his reasonings, the ardent tone of
his thoughts, and particularly with that impressive earnestness of
manner which gives an air of truth to the whole. At the same time, it
must be confessed that he has not proceeded in his inquiries with the
caution that sound philosophy seems to require. His conclusions are
often unwarranted by his premises. He fails sometimes in removing the
objections which he himself brings forward. He relies too much on
general and abstract propositions which will not admit of application.
And his conjectures certainly far outstrip the modesty of nature.

The system of equality which Mr Godwin proposes is, without doubt, by
far the most beautiful and engaging of any that has yet appeared. An
amelioration of society to be produced merely by reason and conviction
wears much more the promise of permanence than any change effected and
maintained by force. The unlimited exercise of private judgement is a
doctrine inexpressibly grand and captivating and has a vast superiority
over those systems where every individual is in a manner the slave of
the public. The substitution of benevolence as the master-spring and
moving principle of society, instead of self-love, is a consummation
devoutly to be wished. In short, it is impossible to contemplate the
whole of this fair structure without emotions of delight and
admiration, accompanied with ardent longing for the period of its
accomplishment. But, alas! that moment can never arrive. The whole is
little better than a dream, a beautiful phantom of the imagination.
These 'gorgeous palaces' of happiness and immortality, these 'solemn
temples' of truth and virtue will dissolve, 'like the baseless fabric
of a vision', when we awaken to real life and contemplate the true and
genuine situation of man on earth. Mr Godwin, at the conclusion of the
third chapter of his eighth book, speaking of population, says:

There is a principle in human society, by which population is
perpetually kept down to the level of the means of subsistence. Thus
among the wandering tribes of America and Asia, we never find through
the lapse of ages that population has so increased as to render
necessary the cultivation of the earth.

This principle, which Mr Godwin thus mentions as some mysterious and
occult cause and which he does not attempt to investigate, will be
found to be the grinding law of necessity, misery, and the fear of
misery.

The great error under which Mr Godwin labours throughout his whole work
is the attributing almost all the vices and misery that are seen in
civil society to human institutions. Political regulations and the
established administration of property are with him the fruitful
sources of all evil, the hotbeds of all the crimes that degrade
mankind. Were this really a true state of the case, it would not seem a
hopeless task to remove evil completely from the world, and reason
seems to be the proper and adequate instrument for effecting so great a
purpose. But the truth is, that though human institutions appear to be
the obvious and obtrusive causes of much mischief to mankind, yet in
reality they are light and superficial, they are mere feathers that
float on the surface, in comparison with those deeper seated causes of
impurity that corrupt the springs and render turbid the whole stream of
human life.

Mr Godwin, in his chapter on the benefits attendant on a system of
equality, says:

The spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility, and the spirit of
fraud, these are the immediate growth of the established administration
of property. They are alike hostile to intellectual improvement. The
other vices of envy, malice, and revenge are their inseparable
companions. In a state of society where men lived in the midst of
plenty and where all shared alike the bounties of nature, these
sentiments would inevitably expire. The narrow principle of selfishness
would vanish. No man being obliged to guard his little store or provide
with anxiety and pain for his restless wants, each would lose his
individual existence in the thought of the general good. No man would
be an enemy to his neighbour, for they would have no subject of
contention, and, of consequence, philanthropy would resume the empire
which reason assigns her. Mind would be delivered from her perpetual
anxiety about corporal support, and free to expatiate in the field of
thought, which is congenial to her. Each would assist the inquiries of
all.

This would, indeed, be a happy state. But that it is merely an
imaginary picture, with scarcely a feature near the truth, the reader,
I am afraid, is already too well convinced.

Man cannot live in the midst of plenty. All cannot share alike the
bounties of nature. Were there no established administration of
property, every man would be obliged to guard with force his little
store. Selfishness would be triumphant. The subjects of contention
would be perpetual. Every individual mind would be under a constant
anxiety about corporal support, and not a single intellect would be
left free to expatiate in the field of thought.

How little Mr Godwin has turned the attention of his penetrating mind
to the real state of man on earth will sufficiently appear from the
manner in which he endeavours to remove the difficulty of an
overcharged population. He says:

The obvious answer to this objection, is, that to reason thus is to
foresee difficulties at a great distance. Three fourths of the
habitable globe is now uncultivated. The parts already cultivated are
capable of immeasurable improvement. Myriads of centuries of still
increasing population may pass away, and the earth be still found
sufficient for the subsistence of its inhabitants.

I have already pointed out the error of supposing that no distress and
difficulty would arise from an overcharged population before the earth
absolutely refused to produce any more. But let us imagine for a moment
Mr Godwin's beautiful system of equality realized in its utmost purity,
and see how soon this difficulty might be expected to press under so
perfect a form of society. A theory that will not admit of application
cannot possibly be just.

Let us suppose all the causes of misery and vice in this island
removed. War and contention cease. Unwholesome trades and manufactories
do not exist. Crowds no longer collect together in great and pestilent
cities for purposes of court intrigue, of commerce, and vicious
gratifications. Simple, healthy, and rational amusements take place of
drinking, gaming, and debauchery. There are no towns sufficiently large
to have any prejudicial effects on the human constitution. The greater
part of the happy inhabitants of this terrestrial paradise live in
hamlets and farmhouses scattered over the face of the country. Every
house is clean, airy, sufficiently roomy, and in a healthy situation.
All men are equal. The labours of luxury are at end. And the necessary
labours of agriculture are shared amicably among all. The number of
persons, and the produce of the island, we suppose to be the same as at
present. The spirit of benevolence, guided by impartial justice, will
divide this produce among all the members of the society according to
their wants. Though it would be impossible that they should all have
animal food every day, yet vegetable food, with meat occasionally,
would satisfy the desires of a frugal people and would be sufficient to
preserve them in health, strength, and spirits.

Mr Godwin considers marriage as a fraud and a monopoly. Let us suppose
the commerce of the sexes established upon principles of the most
perfect freedom. Mr Godwin does not think himself that this freedom
would lead to a promiscuous intercourse, and in this I perfectly agree
with him. The love of variety is a vicious, corrupt, and unnatural
taste and could not prevail in any great degree in a simple and
virtuous state of society. Each man would probably select himself a
partner, to whom he would adhere as long as that adherence continued to
be the choice of both parties. It would be of little consequence,
according to Mr Godwin, how many children a woman had or to whom they
belonged. Provisions and assistance would spontaneously flow from the
quarter in which they abounded, to the quarter that was deficient. (See
Bk VIII, ch. 8; in the third edition, Vol II, p. 512) And every man
would be ready to furnish instruction to the rising generation
according to his capacity.

I cannot conceive a form of society so favourable upon the whole to
population. The irremediableness of marriage, as it is at present
constituted, undoubtedly deters many from entering into that state. An
unshackled intercourse on the contrary would be a most powerful
incitement to early attachments, and as we are supposing no anxiety
about the future support of children to exist, I do not conceive that
there would be one woman in a hundred, of twenty-three, without a
family.

With these extraordinary encouragements to population, and every cause
of depopulation, as we have supposed, removed, the numbers would
necessarily increase faster than in any society that has ever yet been
known. I have mentioned, on the authority of a pamphlet published by a
Dr Styles and referred to by Dr Price, that the inhabitants of the back
settlements of America doubled their numbers in fifteen years. England
is certainly a more healthy country than the back settlements of
America, and as we have supposed every house in the island to be airy
and wholesome, and the encouragements to have a family greater even
than with the back settlers, no probable reason can be assigned why the
population should not double itself in less, if possible, than fifteen
years. But to be quite sure that we do not go beyond the truth, we will
only suppose the period of doubling to be twenty-five years, a ratio of
increase which is well known to have taken place throughout all the
Northern States of America.

There can be little doubt that the equalization of property which we
have supposed, added to the circumstance of the labour of the whole
community being directed chiefly to agriculture, would tend greatly to
augment the produce of the country. But to answer the demands of a
population increasing so rapidly, Mr Godwin's calculation of half an
hour a day for each man would certainly not be sufficient. It is
probable that the half of every man's time must be employed for this
purpose. Yet with such, or much greater exertions, a person who is
acquainted with the nature of the soil in this country, and who
reflects on the fertility of the lands already in cultivation, and the
barrenness of those that are not cultivated, will be very much disposed
to doubt whether the whole average produce could possibly be doubled in
twenty-five years from the present period. The only chance of success
would be the ploughing up all the grazing countries and putting an end
almost entirely to the use of animal food. Yet a part of this scheme
might defeat itself. The soil of England will not produce much without
dressing, and cattle seem to be necessary to make that species of
manure which best suits the land. In China it is said that the soil in
some of the provinces is so fertile as to produce two crops of rice in
the year without dressing. None of the lands in England will answer to
this description.

Difficult, however, as it might be to double the average produce of the
island in twenty-five years, let us suppose it effected. At the
expiration of the first period therefore, the food, though almost
entirely vegetable, would be sufficient to support in health the
doubled population of fourteen millions.

During the next period of doubling, where will the food be found to
satisfy the importunate demands of the increasing numbers? Where is the
fresh land to turn up? Where is the dressing necessary to improve that
which is already in cultivation? There is no person with the smallest
knowledge of land but would say that it was impossible that the average
produce of the country could be increased during the second twenty-five
years by a quantity equal to what it at present yields. Yet we will
suppose this increase, however improbable, to take place. The exuberant
strength of the argument allows of almost any concession. Even with
this concession, however, there would be seven millions at the
expiration of the second term unprovided for. A quantity of food equal
to the frugal support of twenty-one millions, would be to be divided
among twenty-eight millions.

Alas! what becomes of the picture where men lived in the midst of
plenty, where no man was obliged to provide with anxiety and pain for
his restless wants, where the narrow principle of selfishness did not
exist, where Mind was delivered from her perpetual anxiety about
corporal support and free to expatiate in the field of thought which is
congenial to her. This beautiful fabric of imagination vanishes at the
severe touch of truth. The spirit of benevolence, cherished and
invigorated by plenty, is repressed by the chilling breath of want. The
hateful passions that had vanished reappear. The mighty law of
self-preservation expels all the softer and more exalted emotions of
the soul. The temptations to evil are too strong for human nature to
resist. The corn is plucked before it is ripe, or secreted in unfair
proportions, and the whole black train of vices that belong to
falsehood are immediately generated. Provisions no longer flow in for
the support of the mother with a large family. The children are sickly
from insufficient food. The rosy flush of health gives place to the
pallid cheek and hollow eye of misery. Benevolence, yet lingering in a
few bosoms, makes some faint expiring struggles, till at length
self-love resumes his wonted empire and lords it triumphant over the
world.

No human institutions here existed, to the perverseness of which Mr
Godwin ascribes the original sin of the worst men. (Bk VIII, ch. 3; in
the third edition, Vol. II, p. 462) No opposition had been produced by
them between public and private good. No monopoly had been created of
those advantages which reason directs to be left in common. No man had
been goaded to the breach of order by unjust laws. Benevolence had
established her reign in all hearts: and yet in so short a period as
within fifty years, violence, oppression, falsehood, misery, every
hateful vice, and every form of distress, which degrade and sadden the
present state of society, seem to have been generated by the most
imperious circumstances, by laws inherent in the nature of man, and
absolutely independent of it human regulations.

If we are not yet too well convinced of the reality of this melancholy
picture, let us but look for a moment into the next period of
twenty-five years; and we shall see twenty-eight millions of human
beings without the means of support; and before the conclusion of the
first century, the population would be one hundred and twelve millions,
and the food only sufficient for thirty-five millions, leaving
seventy-seven millions unprovided for. In these ages want would be
indeed triumphant, and rapine and murder must reign at large: and yet
all this time we are supposing the produce of the earth absolutely
unlimited, and the yearly increase greater than the boldest speculator
can imagine.

This is undoubtedly a very different view of the difficulty arising
from population from that which Mr Godwin gives, when he says, 'Myriads
of centuries of still increasing population may pass away, and the
earth be still found sufficient for the subsistence of its inhabitants.'

I am sufficiently aware that the redundant twenty-eight millions, or
seventy-seven millions, that I have mentioned, could never have
existed. It is a perfectly just observation of Mr Godwin, that, 'There
is a principle in human society, by which population is perpetually
kept down to the level of the means of subsistence.' The sole question
is, what is this principle? is it some obscure and occult cause? Is it
some mysterious interference of heaven which, at a certain period,
strikes the men with impotence, and the women with barrenness? Or is it
a cause, open to our researches, within our view, a cause, which has
constantly been observed to operate, though with varied force, in every
state in which man has been placed? Is it not a degree of misery, the
necessary and inevitable result of the laws of nature, which human
institutions, so far from aggravating, have tended considerably to
mitigate, though they never can remove?

It may be curious to observe, in the case that we have been supposing,
how some of the laws which at present govern civilized society, would
be successively dictated by the most imperious necessity. As man,
according to Mr Godwin, is the creature of the impressions to which he
is subject, the goadings of want could not continue long, before some
violations of public or private stock would necessarily take place. As
these violations increased in number and extent, the more active and
comprehensive intellects of the society would soon perceive, that while
population was fast increasing, the yearly produce of the country would
shortly begin to diminish. The urgency of the case would suggest the
necessity of some mediate measures to be taken for the general safety.
Some kind of convention would then be called, and the dangerous
situation of the country stated in the strongest terms. It would be
observed, that while they lived in the midst of plenty, it was of
little consequence who laboured the least, or who possessed the least,
as every man was perfectly willing and ready to supply the wants of his
neighbour. But that the question was no longer whether one man should
give to another that which he did not use himself, but whether he
should give to his neighbour the food which was absolutely necessary to
his own existence. It would be represented, that the number of those
that were in want very greatly exceeded the number and means of those
who should supply them; that these pressing wants, which from the state
of the produce of the country could not all be gratified, had
occasioned some flagrant violations of justice; that these violations
had already checked the increase of food, and would, if they were not
by some means or other prevented, throw the whole community in
confusion; that imperious necessity seemed to dictate that a yearly
increase of produce should, if possible, be obtained at all events;
that in order to effect this first, great, and indispensable purpose,
it would be advisable to make a more complete division of land, and to
secure every man's stock against violation by the most powerful
sanctions, even by death itself.

It might be urged perhaps by some objectors that, as the fertility of
the land increased, and various accidents occurred, the share of some
men might be much more than sufficient for their support, and that when
the reign of self-love was once established, they would not distribute
their surplus produce without some compensation in return. It would be
observed, in answer, that this was an inconvenience greatly to be
lamented; but that it was an evil which bore no comparison to the black
train of distresses that would inevitably be occasioned by the
insecurity of property; that the quantity of food which one man could
consume was necessarily limited by the narrow capacity of the human
stomach; that it was not certainly probable that he should throw away
the rest; but that even if he exchanged his surplus food for the labour
of others, and made them in some degree dependent on him, this would
still be better than that these others should absolutely starve.

It seems highly probable, therefore, that an administration of
property, not very different from that which prevails in civilized
states at present, would be established, as the best, though
inadequate, remedy for the evils which were pressing on the society.

The next subject that would come under discussion, intimately connected
with the preceding, is the commerce between the sexes. It would be
urged by those who had turned their attention to the true cause of the
difficulties under which the community laboured, that while every man
felt secure that all his children would be well provided for by general
benevolence, the powers of the earth would be absolutely inadequate to
produce food for the population which would inevitably ensue; that even
if the whole attention and labour of the society were directed to this
sole point, and if, by the most perfect security of property, and every
other encouragement that could be thought of, the greatest possible
increase of produce were yearly obtained; yet still, that the increase
of food would by no means keep pace with the much more rapid increase
of population; that some check to population therefore was imperiously
called for; that the most natural and obvious check seemed to be to
make every man provide for his own children; that this would operate in
some respect as a measure and guide in the increase of population, as
it might be expected that no man would bring beings into the world, for
whom he could not find the means of support; that where this
notwithstanding was the case, it seemed necessary, for the example of
others, that the disgrace and inconvenience attending such a conduct
should fall upon the individual, who had thus inconsiderately plunged
himself and innocent children in misery and want.

The institution of marriage, or at least, of some express or implied
obligation on every man to support his own children, seems to be the
natural result of these reasonings in a community under the
difficulties that we have supposed.

The view of these difficulties presents us with a very natural origin
of the superior disgrace which attends a breach of chastity in the
woman than in the man. It could not be expected that women should have
resources sufficient to support their own children. When therefore a
woman was connected with a man, who had entered into no compact to
maintain her children, and, aware of the inconveniences that he might
bring upon himself, had deserted her, these children must necessarily
fall for support upon the society, or starve. And to prevent the
frequent recurrence of such an inconvenience, as it would be highly
unjust to punish so natural a fault by personal restraint or
infliction, the men might agree to punish it with disgrace. The offence
is besides more obvious and conspicuous in the woman, and less liable
to any mistake. The father of a child may not always be known, but the
same uncertainty cannot easily exist with regard to the mother. Where
the evidence of the offence was most complete, and the inconvenience to
the society at the same time the greatest, there it was agreed that the
large share of blame should fall. The obligation on every man to
maintain his children, the society would enforce, if there were
occasion; and the greater degree of inconvenience or labour, to which a
family would necessarily subject him, added to some portion of disgrace
which every human being must incur who leads another into unhappiness,
might be considered as a sufficient punishment for the man.

That a woman should at present be almost driven from society for an
offence which men commit nearly with impunity, seems to be undoubtedly
a breach of natural justice. But the origin of the custom, as the most
obvious and effectual method of preventing the frequent recurrence of a
serious inconvenience to a community, appears to be natural, though not
perhaps perfectly justifiable. This origin, however, is now lost in the
new train of ideas which the custom has since generated. What at first
might be dictated by state necessity is now supported by female
delicacy, and operates with the greatest force on that part of society
where, if the original intention of the custom were preserved, there is
the least real occasion for it.

When these two fundamental laws of society, the security of property,
and the institution of marriage, were once established, inequality of
conditions must necessarily follow. Those who were born after the
division of property would come into a world already possessed. If
their parents, from having too large a family, could not give them
sufficient for their support, what are they to do in a world where
everything is appropriated? We have seen the fatal effects that would
result to a society, if every man had a valid claim to an equal share
of the produce of the earth. The members of a family which was grown
too large for the original division of land appropriated to it could
not then demand a part of the surplus produce of others, as a debt of
justice. It has appeared, that from the inevitable laws of our nature
some human beings must suffer from want. These are the unhappy persons
who, in the great lottery of life, have drawn a blank. The number of
these claimants would soon exceed the ability of the surplus produce to
supply. Moral merit is a very difficult distinguishing criterion,
except in extreme cases. The owners of surplus produce would in general
seek some more obvious mark of distinction. And it seems both natural
and just that, except upon particular occasions, their choice should
fall upon those who were able, and professed themselves willing, to
exert their strength in procuring a further surplus produce; and thus
at once benefiting the community, and enabling these proprietors to
afford assistance to greater numbers. All who were in want of food
would be urged by imperious necessity to offer their labour in exchange
for this article so absolutely essential to existence. The fund
appropriated to the maintenance of labour would be the aggregate
quantity of food possessed by the owners of land beyond their own
consumption. When the demands upon this fund were great and numerous,
it would naturally be divided in very small shares. Labour would be ill
paid. Men would offer to work for a bare subsistence, and the rearing
of families would be checked by sickness and misery. On the contrary,
when this fund was increasing fast, when it was great in proportion to
the number of claimants, it would be divided in much larger shares. No
man would exchange his labour without receiving an ample quantity of
food in return. Labourers would live in ease and comfort, and would
consequently be able to rear a numerous and vigorous offspring.

On the state of this fund, the happiness, or the degree of misery,
prevailing among the lower classes of people in every known state at
present chiefly depends. And on this happiness, or degree of misery,
depends the increase, stationariness, or decrease of population.

And thus it appears, that a society constituted according to the most
beautiful form that imagination can conceive, with benevolence for its
moving principle, instead of self-love, and with every evil disposition
in all its members corrected by reason and not force, would, from the
inevitable laws of nature, and not from any original depravity of man,
in a very short period degenerate into a society constructed upon a
plan not essentially different from that which prevails in every known
state at present; I mean, a society divided into a class of
proprietors, and a class of labourers, and with self-love the
main-spring of the great machine.

In the supposition I have made, I have undoubtedly taken the increase
of population smaller, and the increase of produce greater, than they
really would be. No reason can be assigned why, under the circumstances
I have supposed, population should not increase faster than in any
known instance. If then we were to take the period of doubling at
fifteen years, instead of twenty-five years, and reflect upon the
labour necessary to double the produce in so short a time, even if we
allow it possible, we may venture to pronounce with certainty that if
Mr Godwin's system of society was established in its utmost perfection,
instead of myriads of centuries, not thirty years could elapse before
its utter destruction from the simple principle of population.

I have taken no notice of emigration for obvious reasons. If such
societies were instituted in other parts of Europe, these countries
would be under the same difficulties with regard to population, and
could admit no fresh members into their bosoms. If this beautiful
society were confined to this island, it must have degenerated
strangely from its original purity, and administer but a very small
portion of the happiness it proposed; in short, its essential principle
must be completely destroyed, before any of its members would
voluntarily consent to leave it, and live under such governments as at
present exist in Europe, or submit to the extreme hardships of first
settlers in new regions. We well know, from repeated experience, how
much misery and hardship men will undergo in their own country, before
they can determine to desert it; and how often the most tempting
proposals of embarking for new settlements have been rejected by people
who appeared to be almost starving.




CHAPTER 11

Mr Godwin's conjecture concerning the future extinction of the passion
between the sexes--Little apparent grounds for such a
conjecture--Passion of love not inconsistent either with reason or
virtue.


We have supported Mr Godwin's system of society once completely
established. But it is supposing an impossibility. The same causes in
nature which would destroy it so rapidly, were it once established,
would prevent the possibility of its establishment. And upon what
grounds we can presume a change in these natural causes, I am utterly
at a loss to conjecture. No move towards the extinction of the passion
between the sexes has taken place in the five or six thousand years
that the world has existed. Men in the decline of life have in all ages
declaimed against a passion which they have ceased to feel, but with as
little reason as success. Those who from coldness of constitutional
temperament have never felt what love is, will surely be allowed to be
very incompetent judges with regard to the power of this passion to
contribute to the sum of pleasurable sensations in life. Those who have
spent their youth in criminal excesses and have prepared for
themselves, as the comforts of their age, corporeal debility and mental
remorse may well inveigh against such pleasures as vain and futile, and
unproductive of lasting satisfaction. But the pleasures of pure love
will bear the contemplation of the most improved reason, and the most
exalted virtue. Perhaps there is scarcely a man who has once
experienced the genuine delight of virtuous love, however great his
intellectual pleasure may have been, that does not look back to the
period as the sunny spot in his whole life, where his imagination loves
to bask, which he recollects and contemplates with the fondest regrets,
and which he would most wish to live over again. The superiority of
intellectual to sensual pleasures consists rather in their filling up
more time, in their having a larger range, and in their being less
liable to satiety, than in their being more real and essential.

Intemperance in every enjoyment defeats its own purpose. A walk in the
finest day through the most beautiful country, if pursued too far, ends
in pain and fatigue. The most wholesome and invigorating food, eaten
with an unrestrained appetite, produces weakness instead of strength.
Even intellectual pleasures, though certainly less liable than others
to satiety, pursued with too little intermission, debilitate the body,
and impair the vigour of the mind. To argue against the reality of
these pleasures from their abuse seems to be hardly just. Morality,
according to Mr Godwin, is a calculation of consequences, or, as
Archdeacon Paley very justly expresses it, the will of God, as
collected from general expediency. According to either of these
definitions, a sensual pleasure not attended with the probability of
unhappy consequences does not offend against the laws of morality, and
if it be pursued with such a degree of temperance as to leave the most
ample room for intellectual attainments, it must undoubtedly add to the
sum of pleasurable sensations in life. Virtuous love, exalted by
friendship, seems to be that sort of mixture of sensual and
intellectual enjoyment particularly suited to the nature of man, and
most powerfully calculated to awaken the sympathies of the soul, and
produce the most exquisite gratifications.

Mr Godwin says, in order to shew the evident inferiority of the
pleasures of sense, 'Strip the commerce of the sexes of all its
attendant circumstances, and it would be generally despised' (Bk. I,
ch. 5; in the third edition, Vol. I, pp. 71-72). He might as well say
to a man who admired trees: strip them of their spreading branches and
lovely foliage, and what beauty can you see in a bare pole? But it was
the tree with the branches and foliage, and not without them, that
excited admiration. One feature of an object may be as distinct, and
excite as different emotions, from the aggregate as any two things the
most remote, as a beautiful woman, and a map of Madagascar. It is 'the
symmetry of person, the vivacity, the voluptuous softness of temper,
the affectionate kindness of feelings, the imagination and the wit' of
a woman that excite the passion of love, and not the mere distinction
of her being female. Urged by the passion of love, men have been driven
into acts highly prejudicial to the general interests of society, but
probably they would have found no difficulty in resisting the
temptation, had it appeared in the form of a woman with no other
attractions whatever but her sex. To strip sensual pleasures of all
their adjuncts, in order to prove their inferiority, is to deprive a
magnet of some of its most essential causes of attraction, and then to
say that it is weak and inefficient.

In the pursuit of every enjoyment, whether sensual or intellectual,
reason, that faculty which enables us to calculate consequences, is the
proper corrective and guide. It is probable therefore that improved
reason will always tend to prevent the abuse of sensual pleasures,
though it by no means follows that it will extinguish them.

I have endeavoured to expose the fallacy of that argument which infers
an unlimited progress from a partial improvement, the limits of which
cannot be exactly ascertained. It has appeared, I think, that there are
many instances in which a decided progress has been observed, where yet
it would be a gross absurdity to suppose that progress indefinite. But
towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes, no observable
progress whatever has hitherto been made. To suppose such an
extinction, therefore, is merely to offer an unfounded conjecture,
unsupported by any philosophical probabilities.

It is a truth, which history I am afraid makes too clear, that some men
of the highest mental powers have been addicted not only to a moderate,
but even to an immoderate indulgence in the pleasures of sensual love.
But allowing, as I should be inclined to do, notwithstanding numerous
instances to the contrary, that great intellectual exertions tend to
diminish the empire of this passion over man, it is evident that the
mass of mankind must be improved more highly than the brightest
ornaments of the species at present before any difference can take
place sufficient sensibly to affect population. I would by no means
suppose that the mass of mankind has reached its term of improvement,
but the principal argument of this essay tends to place in a strong
point of view the improbability that the lower classes of people in any
country should ever be sufficiently free from want and labour to obtain
any high degree of intellectual improvement.




CHAPTER 12

Mr Godwin's conjecture concerning the indefinite prolongation of human
life--Improper inference drawn from the effects of mental stimulants on
the human frame, illustrated in various instances--Conjectures not
founded on any indications in the past not to be considered as
philosophical conjectures--Mr Godwin's and Mr Condorcet's conjecture
respecting the approach of man towards immortality on earth, a curious
instance of the inconsistency of scepticism.


Mr Godwin's conjecture respecting the future approach of man towards
immortality on earth seems to be rather oddly placed in a chapter which
professes to remove the objection to his system of equality from the
principle of population. Unless he supposes the passion between the
sexes to decrease faster than the duration of life increases, the earth
would be more encumbered than ever. But leaving this difficulty to Mr
Godwin, let us examine a few of the appearances from which the probable
immortality of man is inferred.

To prove the power of the mind over the body, Mr Godwin observes, "How
often do we find a piece of good news dissipating a distemper? How
common is the remark that those accidents which are to the indolent a
source of disease are forgotten and extirpated in the busy and active?
I walk twenty miles in an indolent and half determined temper and am
extremely fatigued. I walk twenty miles full of ardour, and with a
motive that engrosses my soul, and I come in as fresh and as alert as
when I began my journey. Emotion excited by some unexpected word, by a
letter that is delivered to us, occasions the most extraordinary
revolutions in our frame, accelerates the circulation, causes the heart
to palpitate, the tongue to refuse its office, and has been known to
occasion death by extreme anguish or extreme joy. There is nothing
indeed of which the physician is more aware than of the power of the
mind in assisting or reading convalescence."

The instances here mentioned are chiefly instances of the effects of
mental stimulants on the bodily frame. No person has ever for a moment
doubted the near, though mysterious, connection of mind and body. But
it is arguing totally without knowledge of the nature of stimulants to
suppose, either that they can be applied continually with equal
strength, or if they could be so applied, for a time, that they would
not exhaust and wear out the subject. In some of the cases here
noticed, the strength of the stimulus depends upon its novelty and
unexpectedness. Such a stimulus cannot, from its nature, be repeated
often with the same effect, as it would by repetition lose that
property which gives it its strength.

In the other cases, the argument is from a small and partial effect, to
a great and general effect, which will in numberless instances be found
to be a very fallacious mode of reasoning. The busy and active man may
in some degree counteract, or what is perhaps nearer the truth, may
disregard those slight disorders of frame which fix the attention of a
man who has nothing else to think of; but this does not tend to prove
that activity of mind will enable a man to disregard a high fever, the
smallpox, or the plague.

The man who walks twenty miles with a motive that engrosses his soul
does not attend to his slight fatigue of body when he comes in; but
double his motive, and set him to walk another twenty miles, quadruple
it, and let him start a third time, and so on; and the length of his
walk will ultimately depend upon muscle and not mind. Powell, for a
motive of ten guineas, would have walked further probably than Mr
Godwin, for a motive of half a million. A motive of uncommon power
acting upon a frame of moderate strength would, perhaps, make the man
kill himself by his exertions, but it would not make him walk a hundred
miles in twenty-four hours. This statement of the case shews the
fallacy of supposing that the person was really not at all tired in his
first walk of twenty miles, because he did not appear to be so, or,
perhaps, scarcely felt any fatigue himself. The mind cannot fix its
attention strongly on more than one object at once. The twenty thousand
pounds so engrossed his thoughts that he did not attend to any slight
soreness of foot, or stiffness of limb. But had he been really as fresh
and as alert, as when he first set off, he would be able to go the
second twenty miles with as much ease as the first, and so on, the
third, &c. Which leads to a palpable absurdity. When a horse of spirit
is nearly half tired, by the stimulus of the spur, added to the proper
management of the bit, he may be put so much upon his mettle, that he
would appear to a standerby, as fresh and as high spirited as if he had
not gone a mile. Nay, probably, the horse himself, while in the heat
and passion occasioned by this stimulus, would not feel any fatigue;
but it would be strangely contrary to all reason and experience, to
argue from such an appearance that, if the stimulus were continued, the
horse would never be tired. The cry of a pack of hounds will make some
horses, after a journey of forty miles on the road, appear as fresh,
and as lively, as when they first set out. Were they then to be hunted,
no perceptible abatement would at first be felt by their riders in
their strength and spirits, but towards the end of a hard day, the
previous fatigue would have its full weight and effect, and make them
tire sooner. When I have taken a long walk with my gun, and met with no
success, I have frequently returned home feeling a considerable degree
of uncomfortableness from fatigue. Another day, perhaps, going over
nearly the same extent of ground with a good deal of sport, I have come
home fresh, and alert. The difference in the sensation of fatigue upon
coming in, on the different days, may have been very striking, but on
the following mornings I have found no such difference. I have not
perceived that I was less stiff in my limbs, or less footsore, on the
morning after the day of the sport, than on the other morning.

In all these cases, stimulants upon the mind seem to act rather by
taking off the attention from the bodily fatigue, than by really and
truly counteracting it. If the energy of my mind had really
counteracted the fatigue of my body, why should I feel tired the next
morning? if the stimulus of the hounds had as completely overcome the
fatigue of the journey in reality, as it did in appearance, why should
the horse be tired sooner than if he had not gone the forty miles? I
happen to have a very bad fit of the toothache at the time I am writing
this. In the eagerness of composition, I every now and then, for a
moment or two, forget it. Yet I cannot help thinking that the process,
which causes the pain, is still going forwards, and that the nerves
which carry the information of it to the brain are even during these
moments demanding attention and room for their appropriate vibrations.
The multiplicity of vibrations of another kind may perhaps prevent
their admission, or overcome them for a time when admitted, till a
shoot of extraordinary energy puts all other vibration to the rout,
destroys the vividness of my argumentative conceptions, and rides
triumphant in the brain. In this case, as in the others, the mind seems
to have little or no power in counteracting or curing the disorder, but
merely possesses a power, if strongly excited, of fixing its attention
on other subjects.

I do not, however, mean to say that a sound and vigorous mind has no
tendency whatever to keep the body in a similar state. So close and
intimate is the union of mind and body that it would be highly
extraordinary if they did not mutually assist each other's functions.
But, perhaps, upon a comparison, the body has more effect upon the mind
than the mind upon the body. The first object of the mind is to act as
purveyor to the wants of the body. When these wants are completely
satisfied, an active mind is indeed apt to wander further, to range
over the fields of science, or sport in the regions of. Imagination, to
fancy that it has 'shuffled off this mortal coil', and is seeking its
kindred element. But all these efforts are like the vain exertions of
the hare in the fable. The slowly moving tortoise, the body, never
fails to overtake the mind, however widely and extensively it may have
ranged, and the brightest and most energetic intellects, unwillingly as
they may attend to the first or second summons, must ultimately yield
the empire of the brain to the calls of hunger, or sink with the
exhausted body in sleep.

It seems as if one might say with certainty that if a medicine could be
found to immortalize the body there would be no fear of its [not] being
accompanied by the immortality of the mind. But the immortality of the
mind by no means seems to infer the immortality of the body. On the
contrary, the greatest conceivable energy of mind would probably
exhaust and destroy the strength of the body. A temperate vigour of
mind appears to be favourable to health, but very great intellectual
exertions tend rather, as has been often observed, to wear out the
scabbard. Most of the instances which Mr Godwin has brought to prove
the power of the mind over the body, and the consequent probability of
the immortality of man, are of this latter description, and could such
stimulants be continually applied, instead of tending to immortalize,
they would tend very rapidly to destroy the human frame.

The probable increase of the voluntary power of man over his animal
frame comes next under Mr Godwin's consideration, and he concludes by
saying, that the voluntary power of some men, in this respect, is found
to extend to various articles in which other men are impotent. But this
is reasoning against an almost universal rule from a few exceptions;
and these exceptions seem to be rather tricks, than powers that may be
exerted to any good purpose. I have never heard of any man who could
regulate his pulse in a fever, and doubt much, if any of the persons
here alluded to have made the smallest perceptible progress in the
regular correction of the disorders of their frames and the consequent
prolongation of their lives.

Mr Godwin says, 'Nothing can be more unphilosophical than to conclude,
that, because a certain species of power is beyond the train of our
present observation, that it is beyond the limits of the human mind.' I
own my ideas of philosophy are in this respect widely different from Mr
Godwin's. The only distinction that I see, between a philosophical
conjecture, and the assertions of the Prophet Mr Brothers, is, that one
is founded upon indications arising from the train of our present
observations, and the other has no foundation at all. I expect that
great discoveries are yet to take place in all the branches of human
science, particularly in physics; but the moment we leave past
experience as the foundation of our conjectures concerning the future,
and, still more, if our conjectures absolutely contradict past
experience, we are thrown upon a wide field of uncertainty, and any one
supposition is then just as good as another. If a person were to tell
me that men would ultimately have eyes and hands behind them as well as
before them, I should admit the usefulness of the addition, but should
give as a reason for my disbelief of it, that I saw no indications
whatever in the past from which I could infer the smallest probability
of such a change. If this be not allowed a valid objection, all
conjectures are alike, and all equally philosophical. I own it appears
to me that in the train of our present observations, there are no more
genuine indications that man will become immortal upon earth than that
he will have four eyes and four hands, or that trees will grow
horizontally instead of perpendicularly.

It will be said, perhaps, that many discoveries have already taken
place in the world that were totally unforeseen and unexpected. This I
grant to be true; but if a person had predicted these discoveries
without being guided by any analogies or indications from past facts,
he would deserve the name of seer or prophet, but not of philosopher.
The wonder that some of our modern discoveries would excite in the
savage inhabitants of Europe in the times of Theseus and Achilles,
proves but little. Persons almost entirely unacquainted with the powers
of a machine cannot be expected to guess at its effects. I am far from
saying, that we are at present by any means fully acquainted with the
powers of the human mind; but we certainly know more of this instrument
than was known four thousand years ago; and therefore, though not to be
called competent judges, we are certainly much better able than savages
to say what is, or is not, within its grasp. A watch would strike a
savage with as much surprise as a perpetual motion; yet one is to us a
most familiar piece of mechanism, and the other has constantly eluded
the efforts of the most acute intellects. In many instances we are now
able to perceive the causes, which prevent an unlimited improvement in
those inventions, which seemed to promise fairly for it at first. The
original improvers of telescopes would probably think, that as long as
the size of the specula and the length of the tubes could be increased,
the powers and advantages of the instrument would increase; but
experience has since taught us, that the smallness of the field, the
deficiency of light, and the circumstance of the atmosphere being
magnified, prevent the beneficial results that were to be expected from
telescopes of extraordinary size and power. In many parts of knowledge,
man has been almost constantly making some progress; in other parts,
his efforts have been invariably baffled. The savage would not probably
be able to guess at the causes of this mighty difference. Our further
experience has given us some little insight into these causes, and has
therefore enabled us better to judge, if not of what we are to expect
in future, at least of what we are not to expect, which, though
negative, is a very useful piece of information.

As the necessity of sleep seems rather to depend upon the body than the
mind, it does not appear how the improvement of the mind can tend very
greatly to supersede this 'conspicuous infirmity'. A man who by great
excitements on his mind is able to pass two or three nights without
sleep, proportionably exhausts the vigour of his body, and this
diminution of health and strength will soon disturb the operations of
his understanding, so that by these great efforts he appears to have
made no real progress whatever in superseding the necessity of this
species of rest.

There is certainly a sufficiently marked difference in the various
characters of which we have some knowledge, relative to the energies of
their minds, their benevolent pursuits, etc., to enable us to judge
whether the operations of intellect have any decided effect in
prolonging the duration of human life. It is certain that no decided
effect of this kind has yet been observed. Though no attention of any
kind has ever produced such an effect as could be construed into the
smallest semblance of an approach towards immortality, yet of the two,
a certain attention to the body seems to have more effect in this
respect than an attention to the mind. The man who takes his temperate
meals and his bodily exercise, with scrupulous regularity, will
generally be found more healthy than the man who, very deeply engaged
in intellectual pursuits, often forgets for a time these bodily
cravings. The citizen who has retired, and whose ideas, perhaps,
scarcely soar above or extend beyond his little garden, puddling all
the morning about his borders of box, will, perhaps, live as long as
the philosopher whose range of intellect is the most extensive, and
whose views are the clearest of any of his contemporaries. It has been
positively observed by those who have attended to the bills of
mortality that women live longer upon an average than men, and, though
I would not by any means say that their intellectual faculties are
inferior, yet, I think, it must be allowed that, from their different
education, there are not so many women as men, who are excited to
vigorous mental exertion.

As in these and similar instances, or to take a larger range, as in the
great diversity of characters that have existed during some thousand
years, no decided difference has been observed in the duration of human
life from the operation of intellect, the mortality of man on earth
seems to be as completely established, and exactly upon the same
grounds, as any one, the most constant, of the laws of nature. An
immediate act of power in the Creator of the Universe might, indeed,
change one or all of these laws, either suddenly or gradually, but
without some indications of such a change, and such indications do not
exist, it. Is just as unphilosophical to suppose that the life of man
may be prolonged beyond any assignable limits, as to suppose that the
attraction of the earth will gradually be changed into repulsion and
that stones will ultimately rise instead of fall or that the earth will
fly off at a certain period to some more genial and warmer sun.

The conclusion of this chapter presents us, undoubtedly, with a very
beautiful and desirable picture, but like some of the landscapes drawn
from fancy and not imagined with truth, it fails of that interest in
the heart which nature and probability can alone give.

I cannot quit this subject without taking notice of these conjectures
of Mr Godwin and Mr Condorcet concerning the indefinite prolongation of
human life, as a very curious instance of the longing of the soul after
immortality. Both these gentlemen have rejected the light of revelation
which absolutely promises eternal life in another state. They have also
rejected the light of natural religion, which to the ablest intellects
in all ages has indicated the future existence of the soul. Yet so
congenial is the idea of immortality to the mind of man that they
cannot consent entirely to throw it out of their systems. After all
their fastidious scepticisms concerning the only probable mode of
immortality, they introduce a species of immortality of their own, not
only completely contradictory to every law of philosophical
probability, but in itself in the highest degree narrow, partial, and
unjust. They suppose that all the great, virtuous, and exalted minds
that have ever existed or that may exist for some thousands, perhaps
millions of years, will be sunk in annihilation, and that only a few
beings, not greater in number than can exist at once upon the earth,
will be ultimately crowned with immortality. Had such a tenet been
advanced as a tenet of revelation I am very sure that all the enemies
of religion, and probably Mr Godwin and Mr Condorcet among the rest,
would have exhausted the whole force of their ridicule upon it, as the
most puerile, the most absurd, the poorest, the most pitiful, the most
iniquitously unjust, and, consequently, the most unworthy of the Deity
that the superstitious folly of man could invent.

What a strange and curious proof do these conjectures exhibit of the
inconsistency of scepticism! For it should be observed, that there is a
very striking and essential difference between believing an assertion
which absolutely contradicts the most uniform experience, and an
assertion which contradicts nothing, but is merely beyond the power of
our present observation and knowledge. So diversified are the natural
objects around us, so many instances of mighty power daily offer
themselves to our view, that we may fairly presume, that there are many
forms and operations of nature which we have not yet observed, or
which, perhaps, we are not capable of observing with our present
confined inlets of knowledge. The resurrection of a spiritual body from
a natural body does not appear in itself a more wonderful instance of
power than the germination of a blade of wheat from the grain, or of an
oak from an acorn. Could we conceive an intelligent being, so placed as
to be conversant only with inanimate or full grown objects, and never
to have witnessed the process of vegetation and growth; and were
another being to shew him two little pieces of matter, a grain of
wheat, and an acorn, to desire him to examine them, to analyse them if
he pleased, and endeavour to find out their properties and essences;
and then to tell him, that however trifling these little bits of matter
might appear to him, that they possessed such curious powers of
selection, combination, arrangement, and almost of creation, that upon
being put into the ground, they would choose, amongst all the dirt and
moisture that surrounded them, those parts which best suited their
purpose, that they would collect and arrange these parts with wonderful
taste, judgement, and execution, and would rise up into beautiful
forms, scarcely in any respect analogous to the little bits of matter
which were first placed in the earth. I feel very little doubt that the
imaginary being which I have supposed would hesitate more, would
require better authority, and stronger proofs, before he believed these
strange assertions, than if he had been told, that a being of mighty
power, who had been the cause of all that he saw around him, and of
that existence of which he himself was conscious, would, by a great act
of power upon the death and corruption of human creatures, raise up the
essence of thought in an incorporeal, or at least invisible form, to
give it a happier existence in another state.

The only difference, with regard to our own apprehensions, that is not
in favour of the latter assertion is that the first miracle we have
repeatedly seen, and the last miracle we have not seen. I admit the
full weight of this prodigious difference, but surely no man can
hesitate a moment in saying that, putting Revelation out of the
question, the resurrection of a spiritual body from a natural body,
which may be merely one among the many operations of nature which we
cannot see, is an event indefinitely more probable than the immortality
of man on earth, which is not only an event of which no symptoms or
indications have yet appeared, but is a positive contradiction to one
of the most constant of the laws of nature that has ever come within
the observation of man.

When we extend our view beyond this life, it is evident that we can
have no other guides than authority, or conjecture, and perhaps,
indeed, an obscure and undefined feeling. What I say here, therefore,
does not appear to me in any respect to contradict what I said before,
when I observed that it was unphilosophical to expect any specifick
event that was not indicated by some kind of analogy in the past. In
ranging beyond the bourne from which no traveller returns, we must
necessarily quit this rule; but with regard to events that may be
expected to happen on earth, we can seldom quit it consistently with
true philosophy. Analogy has, however, as I conceive, great latitude.
For instance, man has discovered many of the laws of nature: analogy
seems to indicate that he will discover many more; but no analogy seems
to indicate that he will discover a sixth sense, or a new species of
power in the human mind, entirely beyond the train of our present
observations.

The powers of selection, combination, and transmutation, which every
seed shews, are truly miraculous. Who can imagine that these wonderful
faculties are contained in these little bits of matter? To me it
appears much more philosophical to suppose that the mighty God of
nature is present in full energy in all these operations. To this all
powerful Being, it would be equally easy to raise an oak without an
acorn as with one. The preparatory process of putting seeds into the
ground is merely ordained for the use of man, as one among the various
other excitements necessary to awaken matter into mind. It is an idea
that will be found consistent, equal

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