therefore, it has attracted from other employments nearly all the hands which geographical circumstances and the habits or inclinations of the people rendered available; and while the demand it created for infant labor has enlisted the immediate pecuniary interest of the operatives in favor of promoting, instead of restraining, the increase of population; nevertheless, wages in the great seats of the manufacture are still so high, that the collective earnings of a family amount to a very satisfactory sum; and there is, as yet, no sign of decrease, while the effect has also been felt in raising the general standard of agricultural wages in the surrounding country.

But those circumstances of a country, or of an occupation, in which population can with impunity increase at its utmost rate, are rare, and transitory. Very few are the countries presenting the needful union of conditions. Either the industrial arts are backward and stationary, and capital therefore increases slowly; or the effective desire of accumulation being low, the increase soon reaches its limit; or, even though both these elements are at their highest known degree, the increase of capital is checked, because there is not fresh land to be resorted to, of as good a quality as that already occupied. Though capital should for a time double itself simultaneously with population, if all this capital and population are to find employment on the same land, they cannot without an unexampled suc-. cession of agricultural inventions continue doubling the produce; therefore, if wages did not fall, profits must; and when profits fall, increase of capital is slackened. Beside, even if wages did not fall, the price of food (as will be shown more fully hereafter) would in these circumstances necessarily rise; which is equivalent to a fall of wages.

Except, therefore, in the very peculiar cases which I have just noticed, of which the only one of any practical importance is that of a new colony, or a country in circum

stances equivalent to it; it is impossible that population should increase at its utmost rate, without lowering wages. Nor will the fall be stopped at any point, short of that which either by its physical or its moral operation, checks the increase of population. In no old country, therefore, does population increase at anything like its utmost rate; in most, at a very moderate rate; in some countries, not at all. These facts are only to be accounted for in two ways. Either the whole number of births which nature admits of, and which happen in some circumstances, do not take place; or, if they do, a large proportion of those who are born, die. The retardation of increase results either from mortality or prudence; from Mr. Malthus's positive, or from his preventive check; and one or the other of these must and does exist, and very powerfully too, in all old societies. Wherever population is not kept down by the prudence either of individuals or of the state, it is kept down by starvation or disease.

Mr. Malthus has taken great pains to ascertain, for almost every country in the world, which of these checks it is that operates; and the evidence which he collected on the subject, in his Essay on Population, may even now be read with advantage. Throughout Asia, and formerly in most European countries in which the laboring classes were not in personal bondage, there is, or was, no restrainer of population but death. The mortality was not always the result of poverty; much of it proceeded from unskilful and careless management of children, from uncleanly and otherwise unhealthy habits of life among the adult population, and from the almost periodical occurrence of destructive pestilences. Throughout Europe these causes of shortened life have much diminished, but they have nowhere ceased to exist. Until a period not very remote, hardly any of our large towns kept up their population, independently of the stream always flowing into them from the rural districts:

this was still true of Liverpool until very recently, and even in London, the mortality is larger, and the average duration of life shorter, than in rural districts where there is much greater poverty. In Ireland, epidemic fevers, and deaths from the exhaustion of the constitution by insufficient nutriment, accompany even the most moderate deficiency of the potato crop. Nevertheless, it cannot now be said that in any part of Europe, population is principally kept down by disease, still less by starvation, either in a direct or an indirect form. The agency by which it is limited is preventive, not (in the language of Mr. Malthus) positive. But the preventive remedy seldom, I believe, consists in the unaided operation of prudential motives on a class wholly or mainly composed of laborers for hire, and looking forward to no other lot. In England, for example, I much doubt if the generality of agricultural laborers practice any prudential restraint whatever. They generally marry as early, and have as many children to a marriage, as they would or could do if they were settlers in the United States. During the generation which preceded the enactment of the present Poor Law, they received the most direct encouragement to this sort of improvidence; being not only assured of support, on easy terms, whenever out of employment, but even when in employment, very commonly receiving from the parish a weekly allowance proportioned to their number of children; and the married with large families being always, from a short-sighted economy, employed in preference to the unmarried; which last premium on population still exists. Under such prompting, the rural laborers acquired habits of recklessness, which are so congenial to the uncultivated mind, that in whatever manner produced, they in general long survive their immediate causes. There are so many new elements at work in society, even in those deeper strata which are inaccessible to the mere movements on the surface, that it is hazardous to affirm

anything positive on the mental state or practical impulses of classes and bodies of men, when the same assertion may be true to-day, and may require great modification in five years' time. It does however seem, that if the rate of increase of population depended solely on the agricultural laborers, it would, as far as dependent on births, and unless repressed by deaths, be as rapid in the southern counties of England as in America. The restraining principle lies in the very great proportion of the population composed of the middle classes and the skilled artisans, who in this country almost equal in number the common laborers, and on whom prudential motives do, in a considerable degree, operate.

4. Where a laboring class who have no property but their daily wages, and no hope of acquiring it, refrain from over-rapid multiplication, the cause, I believe, has always hitherto been, either actual legal restraint, or a custom of some sort which, without intention on their part, insensibly moulds their conduct, or affords immediate inducements not to marry. It is not generally known in how many countries of Europe direct legal obstacles are opposed to improvident marriages. The communications made to the original Poor Law Commission by our foreign ministers and consuls in different parts of Europe, contain a considerable amount of information on this subject. Mr. Senior, in his preface to those communications, says that in the countries which recognize a legal right to relief, "marriage on the part of persons in the actual receipt of relief appears to be everywhere prohibited, and the marriage of those who are not likely to possess the means of independent support is allowed by very few. Thus we are told that in Norway no one can marry without showing, to the satisfaction of

• Forming an Appendix (F) to the General Report of the Commissioners, and also published by authority as a separate volume.

the clergyman, that he is permanently settled in such a manner as to offer a fair prospect that he can maintain a family.'

"In Mecklenburg, that 'marriages are delayed by conscription in the twenty-second year, and military service for six years; beside, the parties must have a dwelling, without which a clergyman is not permitted to marry them. The men marry at from twenty-five to thirty, the women not much earlier, as both must first gain by service enough to establish themselves.'

"In Saxony, that a man may not marry before he is twenty-one years old, if liable to serve in the army. In Dresden, professionists (by which word artisans are probably meant) may not marry until they become masters in

their trade.'

"In Wurtemberg, that no man is allowed to marry till his twenty-fifth year, on account of his military duties, unless permission be especially obtained or purchased; at that age he must also obtain permission, which is granted on proving that he and his wife would have together sufficient to maintain & family or to establish themselves; in large towns, say from 800 to 1000 florins (from £66 13s. 4d. to £84 3s. 4d. ;) in smaller, from 400 to 500 florins; in villages, 200 florins (£16 13s, 4d.)' "

The minister at Munich says, "The great cause why the number of the poor is kept so low in this country arises from the prevention by law of marriages in cases in which it cannot be proved that the parties have reasonable means of subsistence; and this regulation is in all places and at all times strictly adhered to. The effect of a constant and firm observance of this rule has, it is true, a considerable influence in keeping down the population of Bavaria, which is at present low for the extent of country, but it has a most

* Preface, p. xxxiii., or p. 554 of the Appendix itself.