sions from the country fully proves. And, as it respects the higher ranks of society, whose place of residence is a matter purely of preference, it hardly need be remarked, that their predilection for crowded society, wholly negatives the idea, that it is identified with a state of comparative misery. My convictions are all to the contrary. I believe man to be, in the fullest sense of the term, a gregarious being; and though I am aware that this propensity, like all his others, may be abused in its indulgence, still, notwithstanding all the eulogiums pronounced upon solitude, (by those, however, who are still musing upon, and wishing to be contemplated by, as well as occasionally to mingle with, the crowd,) society, even in a very advanced stage, is favourable to man, both as it respects his moral and his intellectual attainments. In my views of the nature and origin of society, I differ from those who trace it to the consciousness of individual wants and necessities; I attribute it rather to the wish for mutual comfort and happiness, and I cannot, therefore, but regard the civic state as natural to man. History fully justifies this view; hence, however thinly any country was peopled of old, its inhabitants were still, very generally, closely associated. And, I confess, it has sometimes entered into my speculations, that as something like this state of population may be the most natural, and as, in the increase in its numbers, it has a tendency to become general, so it is not impossible but that it is to such a state of things that Nature has adapted her calculations, whether of human increase or mortality; never, however, conceding that it is once resolvable, in any sense of the term, into "misery," or that check to population which is so denominated; for, whether the animal or intellectual enjoyments of mankind are considered, it cannot be doubted but that both are, generally speaking, the more highly gratified, the more numerous and permanent is their association. (13) As to the small abridgment in the average duration of life which takes place in crowded, compared with solitary, districts, that cannot, by any ingenuity of interpretation be resolved into "misery." On any such supposition, the inhabitants of France, for instance, must be melancholy, because they are not on the whole so long lived as those of Norway; and the whole race of mankind, indeed, perfectly miserable, because they do not survive to the age of the antediluvians. Human happiness is never embittered by any such considerations; and if, as a modern philosopher has asserted, life is to be estimated by its pleasurable sensations, it is not unlikely but that Nature, by one of those compensatory laws which run through all her operations, may crowd at least an equal measure of enjoyment into the shorter span of human existence. However this may be, the constant influx of individuals, of the lower ranks, from the country into towns and cities, with the sole object of bettering their condition in life, and the voluntary resort to the latter of those in affluence, and whose choice of residence, therefore, is solely guided by the prospect of pleasure, are, as before observed, decisive proofs that the greater degree of mortality which prevails in these more crowded resorts, is not resolvable into the check to population," misery." On the contrary, it is by no means unlikely, that the superior degree of personal enjoyment generally experienced by the inhabitants of towns and cities, compared with the condition of those in country districts, without at all adverting to any criminal indulgences, is itself the cause of this inferiority in the average term of life. I might bring forward no mean authority in favour of this view of the subject: Bacon, in his History of Life and Death, asserts, that "Men live longer, for the most part, when they fare "less deliciously, and are more given to bodily exer"cise; shorter, when they abandon themselves to luxury "and ease1." But, it is with the fact, as distinct from misery, with which I have to do; and that is undoubted. (14) I cannot refrain from remarking, lastly, that the difference in these ratios of mortality falls principally upon the first stage of life, very early infancy. Thus, we learn from Major Graunt3, Dr. Short3, Dr. Price1, Dr. Black3, and almost every writer who has accurately attended to the subject, that, after that period, the chance of living, or the duration of human life, is nearly, if not altogether, as favourable in towns as in country places. The means of preserving the real balance of population, then, as far as mortality is the corrective, is of the most lenient character possible; worthy of the merciful Being with whom are the issues of life and death; and by no means resolvable into the check to which we have been alluding. Death, in the initial period of human existence, leaves no chasm in the social system. The stroke may cause a temporary pang, but does not inflict an immedicable wound: an object of solace may be abstracted, but a pillar of support is not broken, nor has the paternal roof fallen in, and domestic desolation ensued. Nay, the loss of an infant occasions a feeling distinct from misery, even in the maternal bosom; "The mother may not indeed forget her sucking child," but she will remember it as surviving in a better place, and "always 1 Bacon, History of Life and Death, pp. 20, 21. 2 Graunt, Observations on the Bills of Mortality, p. 63. Dr. Short, New Observations, p. 63. Dr. Price, Reversionary Payments, vol. i., p. 241. Dr. Black, Medical Analysis, pp. 20, 21. beholding the face of its heavenly Father." The heart thus becomes at once softened and elevated, and, instead of being lacerated, feels solaced at the recollection of an event which, generally speaking, every family has to experience, though those in the situations I have been describing, in somewhat larger proportions. But, I forget that I am arguing with a theory, which regards not these feelings; which pronounces infant existence worthless to society, and which has insulted the matrons of the country, as those who only gratify selfish propensities, when, in obeying the dictates of Nature and of God, they gave to their country its glory and its defence! But, I will not give full utterance to my abhorrence of a system which generates such views and such principles. (15) In conclusion; I repeat that the varying ratios of mortality which have always existed, and which still continue to prevail in different degrees of population, differences totally distinct from, and independent of, the checks whether comprised under the heads of vice, misery, or moral restraint, are utterly subversive of the geometrical ratio of human increase, and of all the deductions founded on so fallacious and impossible a theory. In proceeding to detect other arithmetical errors of the same system, I shall next shew what might occasion, for a certain length of time, the rate of increase alleged; a cause, however, of which the anti-populationists have been anxious to deny the existence; or, at least, to dispute the effect,-I mean Emigration. 78 CHAPTER VI. OF THE EFFECTS OF EMIGRATION ON THE INCREASE (1) As the sole proofs of the existence of the geometric ratios of human increase, on which the theory of superfecundity is founded, are said to be derived from various parts of America, and as the slowest of them is supposed to be established upon the progressive augmentation of the inhabitants of that entire country, it became essential that the demonstration, as it is called, should be guarded by an assertion of a most extraordinary nature, namely, that with respect to such increase, emigration is quite "immaterial." The recent and well known origination of those settlements; their annual history from that period to the present hour; the evidence the very structure of society there affords, together with the local, and even domestic knowledge, not only in every part of the British islands, but throughout Europe, (of which they have now become the colony,) of these vast and constant deportations, are wholly disregarded. Emigration is pronounced by the "Philosophers of Europe," advocates of the prevailing principle of population, to be "immaterial," and the idea is too flattering to the patriots of America, not to be eagerly adopted by them; and "when they do agree, their unanimity is wonderful;"-miraculous indeed, it may well be called, in this instance, investing, as it does, mankind with a faculty of increase which, I trust, it has been already proved, involves a series of physical impossibilities. |