and the sum is 966; but in the year 94, only 912 appear. Two years further, or from 12, six doublings of 17 come, in the 96th year, to 1104, instead of 1011, the actual number. In the next periods, the 14th and 16th years, the doublings amount to 1232 and 1360; the sums in the table to 1116 and 1229 only, the totals of the years 98 and 100, in which those doublings respectively terminate. All this while, the deaths have been omitted to be subtracted from the sums given from the table; a neglect which the king of terrors will not be guilty of for a hundred years together, as it regards any community in our world. I am fully warranted, therefore, in saying, that the above table, when thus fairly applied, exhibits a population increasing in a duplicate ratio, of which the term is more than fourteen," and less than fifteen years."

(20) But the data on which this table is founded are hardly less surprising, and, certainly, not at all less impossible, than those already mentioned. In this case all must still marry at 20 years of age: all the married must be fruitful to the degree of eight children each every child must live, and become in turn the parent of eight children, marrying as before, and proving equally fruitful; no deaths, in the meantime, are accounted for in this table, and then we see a population which will double "in less than fifteen years." Need the reader be again reminded of the additions which must be made to this measure of prolificness likewise, if this rate of increase is to be sustained, in order to make up for the deaths which occur in infancy, for the impotent and weakly portion of the community who never marry, for the number of absolutely sterile or comparatively unprolific marriages, and for those marriages dissolved by death before they have contributed their proportion to the general stock of

existence? Upon the most favourable suppositions ever yet hazarded, far beyond half the number of children assigned as the average prolificness of marriages in the preceding table must be added to it, perhaps nearer double that sum, in order to afford eight marrying and fruitful children for the average to every such union. Between fourteen and fifteen must be the least number in every such family, according to a calculation of Mr. Malthus's subsequently noticed. I hardly need add, that these, compared with the former suppositions, necessary as they are to the periods of doubling examined, are but the balance of equal impossibilities.

(21) But we are informed, that "even this extra"ordinary rate of increase is probably short of the " utmost power of population," and "that it cannot be “doubted, that, in particular districts, the period of "doubling, from procreation only, has often been less "than fifteen years1." It would be a matter of great curiosity if this class of our writers on the subject of population, after favouring the public with what they conceive to be the maximum of that power, would proceed to demonstrate the possibility of their assertions, not by abstract reasonings upon the subject, or by some formula which would conceal from all but the practised mathematician every step of the process, and every thing, perhaps, excepting the fallacious result, from even him; but, in some such method as that adopted in this chapter, and which will be again more fully pursued, namely, by plain numerical calculations, open, step by step, to general examination, and obvious throughout to the test of human experience. To this species of proof, those who make or reiterate such

'Malthus, Essay on Population, p. 339, note.

statements as the preceding ones, are challenged; in the mean time, their assertions, however bold and repeated, are unhesitatingly contradicted and denied.

(22) It is not a little singular with regard to these rapid periods of doubling, that the more judicious of the writers of the country, in which we are assured they have so frequently occurred as to leave no manner of doubt upon the subject, and occurred from procreation only, not only doubt, but deny the fact altogether; probably from an apprehension that any suppositions so grossly absurd would have the effect of bringing into deserved suspicion and contempt the more moderate term for which they themselves zealously contend, and which sufficiently satisfies the purposes of national vanity. Thus Dr. Seybert, alluding to the philosophers of Europe," as he calls this class of writers, expressly says, that should any such facts as they have deemed possible be found in portions of newly formed states, "for the causes of such partial "increase, we must look to other sources than mere procreation1." What other sources are there? emigrations only.

(23) Thus discredited and denied in the country where they are said to have occurred, and, what is of far greater importance to the argument, shewn to be absurd and impossible to the highest degree every where, shall we hear any more of these doublings in 10 years, in 12 years, and in less than 15 years? Doubtlessly. The system I am combating cannot afford to forego them; it is made up of these and other suppositions equally extravagant, which are presented to the reader as incontrovertible facts, and it must stand or fall with them. Hence these ratios of human

1 Seybert's Statistical Annals of the United States.

increase will continue to be reasserted, with as thorough a disregard of the plainest demonstrations of their impossibility, as, for instance, the paucity of population in the American Colonies in 1643, and its plethory in China at the present moment, which will still be maintained and appealed to, in contempt of all evidence, and even in defiance of official information to the contrary. Such is the effrontery of a system that cruelly asserts, in so many words of a numerous portion of the human race, "that they have no business to be where they are," and which blasphemously insinuates throughout, that the universal Parent is devoid either of the will or the power to provide for the unchecked numbers of his human offspring.

28.

CHAPTER III.

OF THE POSSIBLE PERIODS OF HUMAN DUPLICATION,

CONTINUED.

(1) THE next period of doubling that has to be examined, is that put forth by Dr. Franklin. The comparatively early period of his literary life in which it was written may apologize for the contradictions and absurdities it involves, even as explained by himself; and it would not therefore have been noticed here, but that it is adopted by our anti-populationists and advanced as one of their principal proofs, especially by the author so frequently alluded to, who repeatedly refers to Dr. Franklin as one of his main authorities1.

(2) The following then are the terms in which the latter delivers himself on the subject. " Marriages "in America are more general, and more generally

66

early, than in Europe; and if it is reckoned there, "that there is but one marriage per annum among "100 persons, perhaps we may here reckon two; and "if in Europe they have but four births to a marriage, (many of their marriages being late,) we may here "reckon eight; of which, if one half grow up, and our marriages are made, one with another, at twenty years of age, our people must at least be doubled every twenty years." Mr. Malthus, quoting that part of the sentence which refers to American prolificness, and that portion of it which survives to be married, adds, that it "is probably not far from the

'Malthus, Essay, Pref. p.iv. p. 2. Dr. Franklin, Works, vol. ii. p. 385. 8vo. 1806.