whose value increases from year to year, and who becomes from day to day more free. In the last, nature acquires power over man, whose value diminishes from day to day, as he becomes more and more enslaved.

In the first, the circulation is rapid, with constant tendency to have society assume that form in which strength and beauty are most combined that of a cone, or pyramid. In the last, the circulation becomes from day to day more languid, and society tends to assume that form which is least consistent with either strength or beauty that of an inverted pyramid.

§ 3. Looking to Greece, in the days of Solon, we observe the first of the sets of phenomena above described a rapid circulation of society, accompanied by division of the land-by the creation of local centres-by a constant growth in the power of association and combination — by a wonderful development of intellectual power-and by the enfranchisement of man. Looking to it, next, in the days of Pericles and his successors, we find the circulation becoming more languid - the land becoming consolidated—the local centres diminishing in importance, while a great central city rises on their ruins the demand for intellectual faculty declining-pauperism increasing from year to year, and producing a necessity for colonization and free citizens being re-enslaved.

Turning next to Italy in the days when the Campagna afforded food to the inhabitants of its numerous cities, we see a reproduction of the facts of early Greece. Studying it in the days of Pompey and Cæsar, we find property in land to have become everywhere consolidated, and its owners to have become absentee proprietors, residents of a great city filled with paupers and owned by traders in men and money; the local centres to have so far diminished in importance that they almost cease to be known to history; the circulation of society almost to have disappeared; the demand for intellectual faculty to have been superseded by that for mere brute force, to be employed in extending the field of operation- and thus replacing the already exhausted Italy and Sicily by the yet unexhausted fields for plunder presented by Asia and by Africa.

Looking next to the British islands, we see, during a long course

of centuries, facts similar to those observed in early Greece and Italy the circulation of society increasing with the gradual increase in the variety of employments- the local centres growing in number and in importance—the land becoming more and more divided the power of association and combination steadily augmenting and man becoming everywhere more free.

Turning thence to the British empire of the present day, we see landed property becoming more and more consolidated its owners more and more becoming absentees and its cities becoming more and more crowded with paupers, and more and more becoming the property of traders in men and money; while everywhere the local centres are declining in importance. everywhere the circulation of society becomes more languid everywhere the demand is made for those additions to population which consist in the mere brute force required to serve the purposes of those who live by the exercise of their powers of appropriation and every day exhibits an increased necessity for new fields of action to take the place of the ruined Portugal, the almost extinct Turkey, the exhausted Ireland, and the now rapidly perishing Indies of the East and of the West.

In all the cases of advancing civilization above presented for the reader's consideration, the facts were one and the same. In all those of declining civilization, the evidences of such decline are precisely similar. In all, absenteeism and over-population are seen growing in due proportion to each other. In all, the accumulations of the past acquire an increased control over the labors of the present.* In all, the proportion of society engaged in the work of simple appropriation is a constantly augmenting one. In all, the form of society is seen passing from the beautiful and stable one of the true pyramid to that of the inverted one. Will the end in all prove to have been the same? In answer, we can only say that the prosperity of a community based upon trade has always proved to be a very fleeting one; that its foundations

* See ante, p. 420, for the assertion, that the workman is "indebted for being employed at all" to the losses incurred by his employer. The effect of an unsound system in corrupting the modes of thought was never more clearly exhibited than in the document from which that extract was made. The reasoning, throughout, in reference to the relation of employer and employed, is precisely the same with that we find in the journals of Carolina; and yet that document was published by order of the British House of Commons!

have always thus far proved to have been laid "in gold-dust and sand" and that there exists no reason for believing that which has always been true in the past can be otherwise than true in the present, or will prove false in the future.

§ 4. The theory of over-population having originated in England, and thence, too, having been derived the supporting one of Mr. Ricardo, in relation to the occupation of the earth, it has been deemed just and proper to study carefully the English system, with a view to ascertaining to what extent the peculiar policy there attempted to be established has tended to production of such serious error on the part of her economists. If the doctrines taught in the English school are right, then has the Creator made a serious blunder-having established slavery as the ultimate condition of a vast majority of the human race. If, on the contrary, they are wrong, then is freedom the ultimate lot of man, and then are there found throughout the natural laws regulating the social system, the same order, beauty, and harmony of arrangement we see prevailing everywhere else throughout the organic and inorganic world. One of these things is absolutely and universally true, and the other as absolutely and universally false. Either an all-wise Deity has made a mistake, or man has made one, and has invented a theory by help of which to gloss it over.

That slavery is the ultimate tendency of the Malthusian system, will be obvious to the reader after a moment's reflection upon the proposition, that in the natural course of things population tends to outrun subsistence-men tending to increase in geometrical proportion, while food can be made to increase only in an arithmetical one. This being so, then the man who owns the food-producing machine must become the master of those whose necessities require that they should use it. The one holds the key of the great granary of nature, and the other must pay for the privilege of entering therein, be the price of admission what it may. The doctrine of over-population is, therefore, one of centralization, slavery, and death.

That this, in fact, was Mr. Malthus's own view of the case, is proved by the passage in which he tells his readers, that as, "by the law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, population can never actually increase beyond the lowest

nourishment capable of supporting it, a strong check on population, from the difficulty of obtaining food, must be constantly in operation. This difficulty must fall somewhere, and must necessarily fall in some or other of the various forms of misery, or the fear of misery, by a larger portion of mankind."* Mankind are thus subjected to a constant pressure, forcing their numbers up to that point at which it is impossible to obtain "the lowest nourishment;" and at which misery is required to step in, and-by thinning them off-keep them within the limits of the supply of food. Under such circumstances, there can be no law but that of force— the man who is strong of arm, or of intellect, enslaving his neighbor who is weak in these respects; and doing so in virtue of the laws of God!

The over-population theory originated in England, in the midst. of an appalling state of pauperism, and it finds its chief support. in the facts furnished by the British empire. Why should this be so? Because the English policy has so long looked steadily to the augmentation of that great obstacle to the progress of man which results from the necessity for effecting changes in the place of matter. Wherever that obstacle most exists the supply of food is least, and population is most superabundant. As it diminishes, the supply of food increases, man acquires a higher value, and it comes more and more to be recognised that the treasures of nature are infinite in extent. waiting only the demand for their production.

It is precisely as that obstacle is removed that the prices of raw materials and of finished commodities tend more and more to approximate thus furnishing the most perfect evidence of advancing civilization. As they come more and more together, the power of the laborer over nature, and over himself, increases, but the power of other men over him as steadily declines; and thus does he pass from the condition of slave to that of freeman. The English system having for its base the idea of cheap land, cheap labor, cheap cotton, cheap corn, and dear cloth and dear iron, the more it is carried out, the greater is the tendency towards a decline in the power of man over nature-towards his subjection to the will of his fellow-man and towards the verification of the Malthu

* Essay on the Principle of Population, book 1, chap. i.

sian theory, in virtue of which man becomes necessarily the hewer of wood and the drawer of water for his fellow-man.

§ 5. The one great characteristic of the laws of nature is, that they act always in one direction. Having ascertained that the law of gravitation is true in regard to the apple now falling from the tree, it becomes safe to assume that it is equally so in reference to all the planets of which our system is composed, and that it has governed the movements of all the apples that have ever fallen, and will govern all that ever will fall, however long may be the duration of the earth. Admitting the case to be the same with the laws controlling the movements of man, and seeing that in the earliest periods of society he is very poor and miserable, while in later ones he becomes stronger and more able to command supplies of food, it follows, necessarily, that his power to command the services of nature must steadily increase, as he becomes more enabled to combine his efforts with those of his neighbor man.

That such is the tendency in the early ages of society, is admitted by all food then becoming more abundant as men increase in numbers, and are more and more enabled to work in combination with each other. Having, however, reached some certain point, the law, according to Mr. Malthus, turns round, and, with every step in the further progress of population and of wealth, food becomes more scarce-requiring that a portion of the occupants of the land should "regularly die of want;"* as the savages of the early period had done. †

This, as the reader will now observe, exactly represents what has been the course of events in Ireland, in Jamaica, in India, in Portugal, and in Turkey; and also, that which was the course in England at the date of Mr. Malthus's work, when property in the land was just beginning to be consolidated; and when the pro

* MILL: Elements of Political Economy, p. 16.

"After a certain, and not very advanced, stage in the progress of agriculture; as soon, in fact, as men have applied themselves to cultivation with any energy, and have brought to it any tolerable tools; from that time, it is the law of production from the land, that in any given state of agricultural knowledge, by increasing the labor, the produce is not increased in an equal degree; doubling the latter does not double the former; or, to express the same idea in other words, every increase of produce is obtained by a more than proportional increase in the application of labor to the land."-J. S. MILL, Principles, vol. i., p. 212.