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LECTURE VII.

ON POPULATION.

I OBSERVED in my opening remarks upon Mr. Malthus' work, that the main defect of his theory is, that it is entirely one-sided. He has considered the increase of numbers in a community solely with reference to the increase of consumption which it involves, disregarding the natural effect of the same cause upon production. An increase of population is, indeed, as he says, an effect of national prosperity; but it is a cause also. It is the consequence no doubt, but it is at the same time the prolific source, of the wealth of nations. Its operation in the latter point of view Mr. Malthus has almost wholly overlooked. The tendency of the density of population to make industry more productive is a chapter omitted in his essay. Writing under the influence of a panic fear, not altogether unwarranted by the then circumstances of this country, sinking deeply, as it appeared to be, into a gulf of pauperism, he depicted the principle of human fecundity as a gigantic power encroaching continually with rapid strides upon the limited fund of human subsistence. But he omitted to display the reverse side of the picture, which represents the prolificness of mankind as the great motive power of society-the prime stimulant to industry and enterprise the incentive of art and commerce, of inven

tion and improvement—the means by which the burthen of toil is lightened and its reward increased -by which the earth is replenished with inhabitants, and the powers of nature are made subservient to human necessities and enjoyments.

To supply this omission in the theory of population presented by Mr. Malthus and his followers is the main object of my present lecture. I shall endeavour to point out some of the means by which the populousness of a country conduces, cæteris paribus, to promote the productiveness of its industry, causing the fund of subsistence to increase (provided always that the laws of nature are allowed free scope) in a greater ratio than the increase of population.

The object of all industrial effort, all invention, every application of science to production, is simply this - to diminish the proportion of the effort to the result; in one word, to do more with less. The economy of labour is the constant aim, and one of the highest achievements, of civilisation. Of all the methods by which this economy is attainable, by far the most efficient is exchange, using that term in its widest sense; comprehending not only the barter of products between man and man, but also the separation of occupations and the combination of efforts to a common end. That organisation of industry by which, in an advanced state of society, a number of workmen co-operate together, either in one field of labour or in separate fields, to accomplish a given result, is in effect a complicated, though unconscious, process of exchange. Each workman contributes his peculiar skill and the dexterity acquired by addiction to a single function; and cach

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receives in return a portion of the finished article commensurate to the value of his share in the workmanship. This is as truly in its essence an exchange as the commutation of the fruits of one climate for the fruits of another is so. In this large sense of the term exchange we shall find that the economy of labour effected by it may be assigned chiefly to three heads: 1. The combination of efforts; 2. The separation of employments; 3. The participation of those natural agents or peculiar facilities which are variously distributed among different communities of men.

Most persons who take an interest in economical inquiries are familiar with Adam Smith's beautiful exposition of the division of labour, and the wonderful effects of that principle in diminishing the sum of efforts necessary to production. But, with all its merits, the analysis is not so complete as it might be, had the author discriminated more precisely between the two processes conducive to the same end, and which an advanced condition of industry involves, viz. the combination of labour on the one hand, and what he calls the division of labour-in other words, the separation of employments-on the other. the latter we cannot have a better instance than his own of the manufacture of a pin, divided, according to the method then practised, into no less than eighteen distinct manual operations, each performed, in the best-conducted factories, by a different workman. Dr. Smith mentions that, in a small manufactory which he had seen, where the work was done, under a less perfect arrangement, by ten hands, the daily production was 48,000 pins, or 4,800 pins per

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man; whereas, he says, "if they had all wrought separately and independently, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day."

This wonderful economy of divided labour is mainly owing to that aptitude and skill which each man acquires from constant and exclusive practice in one particular operation; of which we may see astonishing proofs in almost any manufactory we visit; partly, also, to the saving of the time which would, otherwise, be wasted in passing from one occupation to another. But the effects of combined labour in producing a result far greater than the sum of the same efforts made independently, are not less marvellous than those which are produced by separation of occupations. Familiar illustrations of the efficacy of combined labour are those of two greyhounds coursing a hare, and two men working together in a sawpit. In the mechanical part of production we find that two and two do not always make four. There are numerous operations of industry which, if they were not done by several persons acting in concert, could not be done at all. It may safely be asserted, that a single labourer, even giving him his tools ready-made, could not construct a single mile of railway or canal in his whole lifetime; but one hundred men might make one hundred miles, and one thousand men would certainly make one thousand miles in a still shorter time.

The perfection of productive power seems to require two things; first, that you should be able to distribute each portion of the work requiring the employment of different muscles, the exercise of

different mental faculties, the possession of different facilities, among so many distinct sets of producers; secondly, that you should have the command of the requisite numbers to act in concert in all those numerous operations in which power is multiplied in a ratio greater than that of the added number of hands by the combination of efforts. Thirdly, the economy of labour is enormously promoted by the power which exchange affords of transferring the various natural or artificial productions of different localities from one to another.

The law of Providence, designed to ensure man's dependence on the society and assistance of his fellows, has assigned, in almost infinite variety, different instruments and facilities of production to different countries in the world, and even to different parts of the same country. In one a warm and genial climate; in another abundant water-power; in a third, a rich and teeming soil; in a fourth, mineral treasures beneath the surface; in a fifth, peculiar facilities for navigation; in a sixth, an innate dexterity and ingenuity in the people-mark out the classes of productions for which each region is best adapted, and which it can at the smallest expenditure of labour furnish to the common consumption. Generally speaking, it is a misapplication of industry, mere waste of time and means, for a community to make at home what it can obtain from a region more favoured than itself in regard to that particular production. Here in England, for instance, we might, by artificial and expensive methods, grow grapes and make wine for ourselves; but it would be both worse and dearer wine than we could buy from

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