(4) The foregoing table gives the contents in hectares, the population, and its comparative density, as well as the proportion of the births, deaths, and marriages in each of the provinces of the Netherlands; and also the increase calculated, on the difference of the births and deaths, in every 100,000 of the inhabitants. The proportions alluded to, which, as before observed, are extremely various, have plainly a relation to each other; though there is as evidently some other powerful cause, which materially affects that relation, and consequently determines the increase. To develop

that cause, is the object of the present inquiry. And, first, it is not the proportion of marriages to the population which occasions the striking difference in the prolificness and increase which appears in the preceding document; or, if it is, it does so in a manner contrary to the suppositions of the anti-populationists. But this, as a fundamental error of their system, will be adverted to hereafter. Nor, second, is it the proportion of births to the population, even, which determines the increase. Thus, if we advert to the sixth and the tenth columns in this table, we shall find, that during five years, where the births are to the population as one in 20-21 inclusive, the increase was .056

It is, therefore, quite clear that the increase is not regulated by the relative proportion of the births merely.

(5) Nothing, then, remains as an adequate cause of these variations (and Nature never acts without one), but that which has been found operative in every country hitherto examined; namely, Space, or the comparative condensation of the population.

If we apply this principle to the facts of a single year, the severest test that can well be imagined, we shall find the proportion of the births and deaths so regulated as clearly to indicate its truth. Thus, adverting to the seventh column of the preceding table, we find that where the annual increase is, on the balance of the births and deaths, upon every 100,000 inhabitants, under 1200, there are, on the average, 175 inhabitants on every 100 hectares; where that increase is from 1200 to 1400, which is the case in seven provinces, there the mean number of individuals, on the same space, is only 133; where the increase is from 1400 to 1600, which occurs in five cases, there the average number is still less, and amounts to barely 86; and lastly, in the six remaining provinces, where the increase is as high as from 1600 to 1800, the population is the thinnest, being at the rate of 75 only. Or, to construct the computation differently. In the three provinces, in which there are less than 50 inhabitants on each 100 hectares, there the increase resulting from the dif ference between the births and deaths amounts, on the average, to 1659 on every 100,000 of the population; where there are from 50 to 100 individuals on the same space, which is the case in eight provinces, there that increase falls to 1522; where there are from 100 to 150 (of which there are three cases only), to 1399; and, lastly, in the five remaining provinces, where the population is the most dense, there being 150 and upwards on the same extent, there the increase is the least, and amounts, on the average, to 1284 only.

(6) But, to extend the examination to the increase during the five years from 1820 to 1825, as expressed in the last column of the table. The difference in that increase, comparing the least peopled province

Drenthe, with the greatest, East Flanders, is more than 70 per cent.: but to class the whole in five divisions, according to the density of the population in the several provinces, the following are the results ; exhibiting a gradation in precise conformity with the principle laid down, and involving a difference, in the increase, of between 50 and 60 per cent.

(7) These, then, are the results deduced from an examination of the censuses of the kingdom of the Netherlands, which superficial observers have supposed to negative the principle which I have enunciated. On the contrary, they establish a species of proof in its favour, founded even on the very objections which have been urged against it, exhibiting the law of population accomplishing with equal certainty its ultimate designs, when the circumstances under which it operates are the most varied, and so adjusting them into a series of minute and constant adaptations, as still to regulate the increase of human beings by the space they have to possess, and the means provided for their sustentation.

(8) That the average ratio of increase in this or in any other country where the numbers are augmenting, will not be continual, is clear from the universal evidence of the proofs already advanced; to say nothing about that part of such increase as is occasioned by the late improvement in the expectation of human

life, and which must, in its very nature, be temporary. But, in reference to this particular portion of Europe, the most densely peopled of any considerable country upon earth, it may be asked whether any increase whatever does not militate against the general argument advanced in this treatise, which goes to prove the existence of an accurate balance between the numbers of human beings and their means of subsistence? I answer; Certainly not. In the kingdom of the Netherlands, it is true, there are 214 individuals upon the square mile', but still at least twosevenths of the soil are uncultivated; and even as it respects its most densely peopled districts, in some of which there is nearly treble that number on the same space, we are assured that "no country in Europe pro"vides from its soil so great a quantity of sustenance, "not only for its inhabitants, but so large a surplus of "food for exportation, and such valuable commodities "to exchange for articles of foreign growth, as Flan"ders 2. But if the principle of population now developed is true, Nature has been too wise and too kind to render any country whatever dependent upon another for the necessaries of life; having so ordained her laws, both physical and moral, that while every nation upon earth has within itself the means of comfortable subsistence to all the population that it contains, or ever shall contain, so by the full development of those means is that population advanced to its utmost degree of happiness and prosperity. The kingdom of the Netherlands, therefore, is still underpeopled, either in reference to its own interests or those of the surrounding nations. Nature is remedying the deficiency, and in the manner which fully demonstrates the true principle of human increase.

'Ency. Brit., Sup., Art. Netherlands, 2 Lowe, Present State, &c., p. 128.

p. 68,

454

CHAPTER XIV.

OF THE LAW OF POPULATION: AS PROVED BY THE CENSUSES OF THE TOWNS OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND.

(1) THE fourth proof of the principle of population, as regulating the increase of human beings inversely to the condensation of their numbers, was stated to be founded on the comparative prolificness of marriages in towns, in relation to the number of their inhabitants.

(2) I confess, however, that this fact does not seem essential to the general argument, as the inhabitants of towns are not necessarily crowded in proportion to their population and extent; nor are the causes very apparent, why marriages in a place, for example, where there are twenty thousand persons resident, should, on the average, be less prolific than another where there are ten thousand only. Such, however, is the case; and after, having detected this singular law of Nature also, I thought it not only too curious in itself, but far too important to the general argument to be omitted; manifesting, as it does, that there are other powerful, though occult, causes in undoubted operation, beside those which are more obvious and explicable, by which Nature regulates the increase of human beings.

(3) The ensuing table comprises 105 towns of England, being the whole number of those contained in the population abstracts in which the marriages, 'births, and deaths, are separately given. A few of