OPINIONS

OF

ENGLISH AND FOREIGN WRITERS ON THE LAW OF POPULATION.

The four laws which have just been considered, namely, the laws of exercise, fecundity, and agricultural industry, with the derivative law of population, are, in my opinion, incomparably the most important truths with which man has to do. They form the true explanation of the chief phenomena of society, and hold the same relation to all other social theories, that the doctrine of gravitation does to the various theories of the planetary motions, which existed up to the time of Newton. I am unwilling to quit this great subject, without adding to what has already been said, the testimony of several distinguished writers, English and foreign, whose opinions are of far greater weight and value than my own. The following quotations will show the reader how general and complete is the acceptance of the Malthusian theory among those who have carefully studied, and rightly apprehended the question. In fact, the modern science of political economy is in the main based on this great theory, in the same manner as astronomy and mechanics are based on the laws of motion and gravitation. As Mr. Senior and Mr. Mill have shown, political economy as a science consists almost entirely of a series of deductions from the laws of fecundity and agricultural industry, and from the familiar law of human nature that "man tends to prefer a greater gain to a smaller." It is mainly by reasoning from these premises, that Malthus, Ricardo, and their successors have given to the science its present highly developed form. "Political Economy, properly so called," says Mr. Mill, "has grown up almost from infancy since the time of Adam Smith." To deny the Malthusian theory is therefore in reality equivalent to a rejection of the whole modern science of political economy, just in the same way as to deny the laws of motion and gravitation would be to reject the astronomical and mechanical sciences. It may be imagined with what extreme

care principles of so fundamental a character have been examined by scientific men. Those who, in the present day, endeavour to refute the Malthusian theory, should know that they are arguing, not against an isolated proposition, or a single individual, but against a science, and a whole scientific body.

I may first quote the opinion of Mr. John Stuart Mill, the most eminent economist and sociologist of the age. After showing that the law of the Increase of Production depends on the laws of increase in the three agents of production-labor, capital, and land-Mr. Mill proceeds to consider the first of these agents. "The increase of labor," he says, "is the increase of mankind; of population. On this subject the discussions excited by the Essay of Mr. Malthus, have made the truth, though by no means universally admitted, yet so fully known, that a briefer examination of the question than would otherwise have been necessary, will probably on the present occasion suffice.

"The power of multiplication inherent in all organic life may be regarded as infinite. There is no one species of vegetable or animal, which, if the earth were entirely abandoned to it, and to the things on which it feeds, would not in a small number of years overspread every region of the globe of which the climate was compatible with its existence.

"To this property of organized beings the human species forms no exception. Its power of increase is indefinite, and the actual multiplication would be extraordinarily rapid, if the power were exercised to the utmost. It never is exercised to the utmost, and yet, in the most favorable circumstances known to exist, which are those of a fertile region colonized from an industrious and civilized community, population has continued for several generations, independently of fresh immigration, to double itself in not much more than twenty years. That the multiplication in the human species exceeds even this, is evident if we consider how great is the ordinary number of children to a family, where the climate is good and early marriages usual; and how small a proportion of them die before the age of maturity, in the present state of hygienic knowledge, where the locality is healthy, and the family adequately provided with the means of living. It is a very low estimate of the capacity of increase, if we only assume that in a good sanitary condition of the people, each generation may be double the number of the generation which preceded it.

"Twenty or thirty years ago, these propositions might still have required considerable enforcement and illustration; but the evidence of them is so ample and incontestible that they have made their way against all kinds of opposition, and may now be regarded as axiomatic." Mr. Mill then states the causes by which these boundless powers of increase are checked in old countries-namely, by want or the dread of want, by poverty or sexual restraint. "If the multiplication of mankind," he says, "proceeded only, like that of the other animals, from a blind instinct, it would be limited in the same manner with

theirs; the births would be as numerous as the physical constitution of the species admitted of, and the population would be kept down by deaths. But the conduct of human creatures is more or less influenced by foresight of consequences. In proportion as mankind rise above the condition of the beasts, population is restrained by the fear of want rather than by want itself."

Mr. James Mill, in his Elements of Political Economy, after stating the law of fecundity, and adducing facts to show the powers of increase under favorable circumstances, says, "That population therefore has such a tendency to increase as would enable it to double itself in a small number of years, is a proposition resting on the strongest evidence, which nothing that deserves the name of evidence has been brought on the other side to oppose." "We know well," he says again, "that there are two causes by which it may be prevented from increasing, how great soever its natural tendency to increase. The one is poverty; under which, let the number born be what it may, all but a certain number undergo a premature destruction. The other cause is prudence; by which, either marriages are sparingly contracted, or care is taken that children, beyond a certain number, shall not be the fruit." Again, in comparing the increase of population with that of capital, he says, "If it were the natural tendency of capital to increase faster than population, there would be no difficulty in preserving a prosperous condition of the people. If on the other hand, it were the natural tendency of population to increase faster than capital, the difficulty would be very great. There would be a perpetual tendency in wages to fall. That population has a tendency to increase faster than capital has, in most places, actually increased, is proved, incontestibly, by the condition of the population in almost all parts of the globe. In almost all countries the condition of the great body of the people is poor and miserable. This is an impossibility if capital had increased faster than population. In that case wages of necessity must have risen, and would have placed the laborer in a state of affluence, far above the miseries of want."

In his article on Colonies in the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Mr. James Mill makes the following allusion to preven. tive intercourse. In speaking of the necessity of meeting the population difficulty in a straightforward and resolute manner, he says, "This is indeed the most important practical problem to which the wisdom of the politician or the moralist can be applied. It has till this time been miserably evaded by all those who have meddled with the subject, as well as by all those who were called upon by their situation to find a remedy for the evils to which it relates. And yet if the superstitions of the nursery were discarded, and the principle of utility kept steadily in view, a solution might not be difficult to be found, and the means of drying up one of the most copious sources of evila source which, if all other sources of evil were taken away, would alone suffice to retain the great mass of human beings in miserywould be seen to be neither doubtful nor difficult to be applied."

Mr. David Ricardo, in his Principles of Political Economy and

Taxation, says, "Of Mr. Malthus's Essay on Population, I ara happy in the opportunity here afforded me of expressing my admiration. The assaults of the opponents of this great work have only served to prove its strength; and I am persuaded that its great reputation will spread with the cultivation of that science of which it is so eminent an ornament."

Mr. Senior, in his treatise on Political Economy in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, bases the whole science on four elementary propositions, two of which are the law of fecundity with its checks, and the law of agricultural industry. "We have already stated," he says, "that the general facts on which the science of Political Economy rests, are comprised in a few general propositions, the result of observation or consciousness. The propositions to which we then alluded are these.

"1. That every man desires to obtain additional wealth with as little sacrifice as possible.

"2. That the Population of the world, or in other words the number of persons inhabiting it, is limited only by moral or physical evil, or by fear of a deficiency of those articles of wealth, which the habits of the individuals of each class of its inhabitants lead them to require.

"3. That the powers of labor and of the other instruments which produce wealth, may be indefinitely increased by using their products as the means of further production.

"4. That, agricultural skill remaining the same, additional labor employed on the land within a given district, produces in general a less proportionate return; or in other words, that though with every increase of the labor bestowed, the aggregate return is increased, the increase of the return is not in proportion to the increase of the labor. “The first of these propositions is a matter of consciousness, the three others are matter of observation."

The first proposition mentioned by Mr. Senior, although not formally stated, is, he says, "assumed in almost every process of economical reasoning. It is the corner-stone of the doctrine of wages and profits, and, generally speaking, of exchange." The second proposition is the law of fecundity with its checks. The checks as enumerated by Mr. Senior are "moral or physical evil, or a fear of deficiency of wealth;" which correspond respectively to vice, misery, and moral restraint, in the language of Mr. Malthus. The third proposition relates to the employment of capital, as an instrument of production; while the fourth is the law of agricultural industry, or diminishing productiveness. Mr. Senior describes the two last propositions as being nearly self-evident. "No one who reflects on the difference between the unassisted force of man, and the more than gigantic powers of capital and machinery, can doubt the former proposition; and to convince ourselves of the other, it is necessary only to recollect that, if it were false, no land except the very best could ever be cultivated; since if the return from a single farm were to increase in full proportion to any amount of increased labor bestowed on it, the

produce of that one farm might feed the whole population of England." Mr. Senior then proceeds to the further consideration and proof of each of these propositions, and to deduce from them the other doctrines of the science. Political Economy, it may here be remarked, though its first principles are of course obtained by induction, is in the main a deductive science; the laws of the distribution and exchange of wealth given in economical works, having been all ascertained by the concrete deductive method of proof, which has been already mentioned as the only means of arriving at the laws of complex phenomena.

In like manner, Mr. Cairnes, the present Whateley Professor of Political Economy in the University of Dublin, bases the science on the same elementary propositions, in his excellent treatise on the Character and Logical Method of Political Economy, published in 1857. After showing that the ultimate premises of political economy consist of certain facts of human nature and of the external world, he says with regard to these facts:-"Although so numerous as to defy distinct specification, there are yet some, the existence and character of which are easily ascertainable, of such paramount importance in relation to the production and distribution of wealth, as to afford a sound and stable basis for deducing the laws of these phenomena. The principal of these I stated to be, 1st, the desire for wealth, and aversion to labor, implanted in human beings: 2ndly, the principles of population derived from the physiological character of man, and his mental propensities; and 3rdly, the physical qualities of the natural agents, more especially land, on which human industry is exercised."

"There are no limits," says Mr. McCulloch in his Principles of Political Economy, "to the prolific power of plants and animals. They are endued with a principle which impels them to increase their numbers beyond the nourishment prepared for them... The progress of population in countries with different capacities for providing food and other accommodations, illustrates at once the operation of the law of increase, and the degree in which it is modified by a change of circumstances. In newly-settled countries, and especially in those which have a large extent of fertile and unoccupied land, population invariably increases with extraordinary rapidity. The popula tion of some of the states of North America has, after making every reasonable allowance for immigrants, continued for upwards of a century to double in every twenty or at most, five-and-twenty years.

But the principle whose operation under favourable circumstances has thus developed itself, is, in the language of geometers, & constant quantity. The same power that doubles the population of Kentucky, Illinois, and New South Wales every five-and-twenty years, exists everywhere, and is equally energetic in England, France, and Holland. Man however is not the mere unreasoning slave of instinct. In the United States every industrious individual who has attained a marriageable age may enter into the matrimonial contract without fear of the consequences: the largest family being there