The 954,073, had all the marriages been first ones. difference here is 58,229. Do the unfortunate class under consideration tend but "slightly" to make it up ?-they amount to 66,731. I rely with the more confidence upon the present instance, as the calculations are, in great measure, founded upon the facts which the statistics of this country furnish, though not carried to the full extent which the latter would warrant, as before observed. (17) In Sweden, the legitimate births of 1823 were 91,049: these, had it been possible that the 23,993 marriages which produced them could have been all first connexions, might have amounted to 96,967. But here again, so far from the supposition being true that the illegitimate children have only a slight tendency to make up the deficiency, they still greatly exceed it, amounting to 7,210. (18) Concerning England, no official information touching this subject is extant. But if she furnishes so high a contrast to the foregoing, and other surrounding countries in this respect, as that not more than of the births are illegitimate, in the name of decency, and of GOD, let the incessant accusations against her poor, and their early marriages, cease: accusations which a reverend political economist has heightened into vituperation, and connected with her poor-laws; asserting, that it is they that occasion that "abandoned and shameless profligacy" with which he charges her poor, compared with those of other countries; in doing which, his pitiable ignorance on the all-important subject on which he pronounces so confidently, is his only apology'. (19) In all countries, therefore, the rule suggested by Mr. Malthus, that, in estimating the prolificness of 1 See Dr. Chalmers's Civic Economy. marriages, we are to omit, in great measure, the second and third marriages, is evidently fallacious; and the assertion, that the illegitimate births, especially in the countries he alludes to, in which the preventive check certainly prevails, is still more glaringly incorrect. But it is by no means for the mere purpose of pointing out mistakes in this or any other writer, on the subject of population, that the subject has been pursued to these particulars; their errors, not bearing essentially on the great question at issue, (and they appear to me to be very numerous, and obvious to detection,) will be passed unnoticed. Those that have been the subject of consideration in this chapter are, however, not of that character; on the contrary, they are, whether considered morally or physically, important branches of the true principle of population. The deductions which the preceding remarks force upon the mind are these:-First, that instead of the power of population being so overcharged as to require perpetual resistance and repression, it demands, on the contrary, these accessions of after-marriages, notwithstanding that they are spoken of so slightly as to their influence on prolificness, to preserve mankind from rapid decrease and ultimate annihilation; it being perfectly evident, that in those communities which increase the most rapidly, and, as it is supposed, by "procreation only," the additions thus made more than double the whole annual increment. So truly do the calculations of the great Author of nature harmonize with the properly regulated propensities, virtues, and affections of human beings! (20) But a second, equally obvious, and more melancholy deduction, must close this chapter. It concerns the number of illegitimate children, and their effect on population. In countries where this preventive check prevails, (and let the fact fall on the hearts of its advocates, or, rather, be hung like a millstone to the system, and sink it into the abyss to which it belongs,)—in countries, I say, cursed by this political "virtue," illegitimate children are necessary to the growth, if not to the preservation, of the species. In this case, Mr. Malthus's assertion, that "the "infant is, comparatively speaking, of no value to "society," is not more monstrous in a moral, than it is false in an arithmetical sense. Wherever the "virtue" in question exists and spreads, the aggregate "value' of such is the worth of the species, who, without such accessions, it is quite evident, would be doomed to decay and destruction. Could France, the annual number of whose births, if we may trust all her statistical authorities, is, compared with those of an age ago, on the wane, and her legitimate ones greatly so; and whose increase of population, now, therefore, simply owing to the improvement in the law of mortality, will, if it is to be continued, demand, ere long, an increase of births,-could France, I ask, dispense with 66,731 such annual accessions; Sweden, with 7,210; or Prussia with 53,576? It is the purpose of Nature to increase her numbers, and to sustain them; nor can she be easily baffled. Almost all the preventive check can do, by its impious interference, is to pollute and embitter the sources of existence; to divest life of all its virtues and its charities; To blur the grace and blush of modesty Take off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, in fine, to degrade man to the level of the beast, in regard to his sexual connexions, and infinitely below the beast in his utter indifference as to their issue. In closing this part of the subject, I am disposed to add somewhat to the observations which have been made on the same head, in a former part of this work; but I shall forbear. I trust I have made the subject, as far as numbers are concerned, somewhat more familiar than it has hitherto been; and it is one of those cases in which mere numbers speak to the heart. The consequences of the preventive check, in this point of view, are palpable, and are such as Nature herself permits not to be evaded. Not to mention, then, the darker and more disgusting evils which this check has in its train, its public victims are known and numbered, amongst which the living are more to be pitied than the dead. It transforms the natural protectors of the sex into their betrayers, and, absolving the tempters, metes out wretchedness and ruin to the less-guilty tempted; and the totally innocent (because infant) beings, who, but for its unhallowed interference, would have been surrounded with affection, and invested with dignity, it consigns to misery, and brands with indelible disgrace: in fine, it converts the sacred institution of matrimony, on which hang all the duties and distinctions of civilization, into a positive curse, as it respects these unhappily numerous classes, by establishing a contrast which consigns them to lasting infamy; and, I repeat, it does all this gratuitously. With these facts, developed and established, let the assertors of the preventive check reconcile their conduct, in endeavouring to impose it on others, with their duty either to GOD or man for myself, I had rather be amongst the number of its victims, than of its advocates. 161 CHAPTER XI. OF THE PROLIFICNESS OF MARRIAGES, AND OF THE PROPORTION OF THE BORN WHO LIVE TO MARRY; AS DEDUCIBLE FROM REGISTERS. (1) Ir is the purport of a distinct section of this work to shew how certainly and exactly Nature accomplishes her intentions on the great aggregate of her operations, however much she may conceal them in their individual diversification. Referring, then, to that part of the work for the establishment of general principles, it is the object of the present argument to prove that an adequate and consecutive number of instances are sufficient to establish those results, especially of a comparative nature, on which the real question as to the principle of population finally depends. (2) That the average of these aggregate results is exact, as it respects individual instances, or that the latter are not liable to certain variations, no one ever supposed; but that they abundantly suffice to establish general, and especially comparative, results, was never doubted, till the introduction of a new theory of political economy and morality required that the method of computing them should be called into question. This is done in language about to be quoted, in which the usual mode of estimating the prolificness of marriages is presented to us as the subject of necessary discussion. It is applied to Dr. Price, who, as one of our early writers on the subject of population, demands our indulgence, and, as having taken the benevolent view of the question, our gratitude; but who, on the latter account, falls under the somewhat sar VOL. II. M |