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105

LECTURE V.

ON POPULATION.

THE physical capacity of the substances adapted for man's subsistence, both animal and vegetable, to increase in a ratio far exceeding the most rapid multiplication of human beings that can naturally take place, has been, I hope, sufficiently evinced. I speak now of the mere abstract power in both cases, on the hypothesis, which never can be realised in fact, that no check or impediment whatever exists to the growth either of population or of production. Practically, we know that the case is very different, both with regard to man and to his food, in every community, and must continue to be so till the end of time. In some societies, the checks upon production, in others, those on population, may operate more forcibly, although it is generally true, that the same causes act concurrently upon both; for in a healthy state of society, as I have before said, population and production advance hand in hand, and whatever tends to increase wealth, increases numbers, and vice versa. Without dwelling more on this point at present, I will just notice one cause of very great potency, on which Mr. Malthus has laid considerable

stress in his exposition of the checks on population, but in a manner calculated, I think, to cause some misconception as to its real effect. Mr. Malthus has spoken of the destruction of human beings consequent on war, as one of those methods by which the natural redundancy of the species is kept in check, and brought down from time to time to the level of the means of subsistence. Now, if it is true that population is thinned by war, it is equally certain that there is no more effectual hindrance to production. If war is wasteful of life, it is not less wasteful of the means of existence, and of capital, which is the life-blood of industry. If it cuts off so many consumers of the earth's products, in which light Mr. Malthus has chiefly regarded it,-on the other hand, it checks production in a more than equal degree, by turning labour into unproductive channels, by retarding improvements and discouraging accumulation, to say nothing of the actual devastation and waste of property which generally attend its course. So far as regards the ratio of population to subsistence, we may be assured that, economically speaking, no country gains by war. If a family is deprived, by death, of any of the members by whose exertions it was maintained, though there may be fewer mouths left to feed, it becomes poorer, not richer, by the loss of the hands that laboured. Just so it is with nations. The same repressive checks, especially the check now referred to,—which cut off the members of the community, cut off, both directly and indirectly, the sources of production; and as it is not the absolute numbers of a community, but its numbers relatively to its products, which determine

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its condition, the impoverishment of a country afflicted by war and similar calamities, proceeds, not merely pari passu, but even in a greater ratio than its depopulation.

This, however, though a very important consideration, is a digression from our course of argument. My object in the present Lecture is to compare, in an existing community, the actual progress of population, subject to such checks as various circumstances may impose upon it, with that of production, subject to the same impediments. Taking into the account whatever obstacles deficiency of subsistence, war, pestilence, or other checks may oppose to the increase of human beings, on the one side, and whatever hindrances on the other, want of capital or of labour, war, vicious laws and institutions, or other causes may offer to the progress of wealth, let us endeavour to ascertain to which side, upon the whole, the balance preponderates - whether the tendency of communities, as time goes on, is to find their numbers encroaching more and more upon their food, or their wealth continually getting a-head of their population.

But the question now stated comes in effect to thisIs it or is it not the tendency of mankind to advance in civilisation? Is society, according to the laws which regulate its constitution, progressive or the reverse? Does man, following the ordinary course of his destination, proceed upwards from destitution and want to prosperity and abundance, or in a downward course, commencing with plenty and comfort, and finding, at each successive stage of his social existence, the difficulty of subsistence be

coming more severe, and the danger of want more imminent? If Mr. Malthus is right, and if population has a natural tendency to outrun subsistence, then the condition of man in society has

natural tendency to deteriorate-increased numbers, scantier food, less leisure, harder labour, increased self-denial and privations, must be the order of his career. If, on the other hand, production is the superior power of the two, and if increasing population is the effect which follows, while it is also the cause which stimulates, the increase of wealth, then we may expect to observe, as numbers multiply, food becoming more abundant and more various, labour lightened by the appliances of art, the classes raised above the necessity of physical toil more numerous, the superfluities of life multiplied in increased proportion to the mere necessaries. Now, in fact, these latter features constitute the very signs and circumstances of civilisation. The question involved in the Malthusian controversy is, therefore, the very question which I just now propounded as to the tendency of the social system and the natural destination of mankind.

It has been contended by the author of the theory we are now considering, and by some of his adherents, among whom I may specify Mr. J. S. Mill as one of the most ardent, that the condition of the lower orders of the people in almost all civilised communities testifies to the truth of the doctrine of overpopulation. Thus Mr. Malthus states, in his letter to Mr. Senior, that "there are the strongest reasons to believe that the pressure in question has occasioned premature mortality in every old country with which

we are acquainted;" and again, in another passage, he says, "the main part of the question with me relates to the cause of the continued poverty and misery of the labouring classes of society in all old states." Mr. Mill expresses the same idea in more dogmatic terms. He says, "that population has a tendency to increase faster than in most places capital has actually increased, is proved incontestably by the condition of the population in most parts of the globe. In almost all countries the condition of the great body of the people is poor and miserable. This would have been impossible if capital had increased faster than population."

Waiving for the present all question as to the justice of this description of the state of the mass of mankind in civilised countries, it is obvious that the question with which we are now concerned, turns not on their absolute, but on their relative, condition. Granting that they are, in some sense, poor and miserable, there are degrees even in poverty and misery. But has their condition deteriorated or improved with the increase of their numbers? That is the real point at issue. Mr. Senior has stated the argument on this head with so much force and clearness, that I prefer to transcribe his language rather than to express the same ideas in my own:

"It is obvious, that if the present state of the world, compared with its state at our earliest records, be one of relative poverty, Mr. Mill's reasoning is unanswerable. If its means of subsistence continue to bear the same proportion to the number of its inhabitants, it is clear that the increase of subsistence and of numbers has been equal. If its means of

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