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nature are described as inexorably confining them. The incessant effort of numbers to overtake food the tendency of the principle of population to increased activity, as soon as ever the pressure of distress is taken off its springs are represented by these writers as a bar to any permanent amelioration of the condition of the working-classes. Scarcely has some alleviating influence from without the effect, it may be, of a change in the laws affecting commerce, or of some mechanical discovery, or of improvements in cultivation — dawned upon their hopes, before the transient prosperity begins to stimulate their desires in the direction of marriage. Hence, after a brief interval, arises a further increase of numbers new competitors for food-the labourmarket once more over-stocked

wages again reduced the last state of the labourer as bad as, or even worse than, the first. "Were the whole mass of human sustenance," says a philosopher of this school," produced by the soil now under cultivation, to be increased twofold by the efforts of human ingenuity and industry, we may assert, as an undoubted truth, that the only effect, after the lapse of a few years, would have been the multiplication in a like proportion of the number of its occupants, with, probably, at the same time, a far increased proportion of misery and crime."* Is there anything in the operation of the laws of nature upon society to warrant

*"In this view, the labouring population are regarded as so many animals, with definite never-increasing wants, and doomed by eternal laws to remain in the same condition themselves and to beget children who are never to rise above it."- Manual of Political Economy, by E. P. Smith, New York.

such a terrible anticipation as this? God forbid! If the assertion just quoted were really "an undoubted truth," "ignorance" of the principles of the social economy would indeed be "bliss;" for nothing could be more calculated than such knowledge, not only to throw the deepest gloom and despondency over the prospects of mankind, but also to damp and discourage all efforts to ameliorate the lot of the many, to improve the gifts of nature, or to increase the fertility of the earth. Happily, the assertion is not only negatived by experience, but is proved to be at variance with the true laws of human progress. In every country of the world, from the earliest records of its history to the present time, the condition of the working classes has become elevated not temporarily, but permanently, in proportion to the advancement of civilisation, the increase of wealth, the progress of discovery, and the improvement in arts, agriculture, and manufacturing skill. Observe; I do not assert that in all communities the labouring class obtains a fair or equitable proportion of the increased produce of the territory. It is by no means the case that the distribution of wealth in rich countries is always so adjusted as to produce the widest possible diffusion of social advantages. But I do say that, by the inevitable laws of nature, by a process which I have explained at length in former lectures, as arising mainly from the agency of competition-a share in the increased wealth and plenty which every new stride in the march of civilisation enables a community to make, is inalienably

* Lecture III., on the "Harmonies of the Social Economy. Competition."

secured to the humblest portion of its members. Improved production begets abundance, and abundance is cheapness, and cheapness is the gain of the poor. Adam Smith has observed-and the remark has become doubly true since his time-that "the accommodation of an European prince does not so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant as the accommodations of the latter exceed those of an African king." The poor must share with the rich the benefits of advancing civilisation. They partake-haud passibus æquis it may be—but still inevitably partake, in the onward movement.

There

is nothing in the arrangements by which Providence has secured the continuance of the human species at variance with this law. The true doctrine of population explains and harmonises the process which takes place. The scale of the "means of existence" is, as I have already pointed out, an ascending scale. It is regulated not by a fixed quantity or kind of food, but by usage and opinion. The luxuries of one generation become the necessaries of the next. The requisite provision for marriage and a family is continually enlarged as civilisation advances, by the addition of fresh articles to the stock. The English peasant would not increase and multiply upon such means of existence as suffice for the Russian serf or the Hindoo at the present day; neither would he do so if his scale of comforts were suddenly reduced to that of the villeins who preceded him a few centuries ago upon his own soil. It is, besides, an utter fallacy to suppose that the full tide of population at once and immediately rushes in whenever a vacuum is produced, so as to raise the stream of human

beings for whom some new channel of relief had been lately opened, to the same volume as before. The arrangements of Providence have ordained it otherwise. The bringing into existence and raising to maturity of a new generation of human beings, is a work of time, and years must elapse in the course of nature between the impulse communicated to population and its realised effect. Meanwhile, the poorer classes become habituated to comforts which increased abundance has placed within their reach-they acquire new tastes and desires-the new commodities which they are able to obtain for their wages are gradually added to their list of wants and become to them necessaries of existence. Increased self-respect follows upon each step that elevates them in the social scale, and the virtues of prudence, economy, and forethought are its fruits. The acquisitions thus made are not by reckless improvidence forfeited and lost; but, on the contrary, become the vantage ground for further advances in the same direction.

Such, I venture confidently to affirm, in opposition to the melancholy theory above quoted, is a true statement, confirmed by history and experience, of the tendency and progress of society, in every country at least in which civilisation is on the advance, and in which industry and property are permitted to have free spread and growth. In such societies improvements in production outrun the growth of population. Wealth increases even faster than men. The amelioration of the condition of the working classes, which the law of nature has thus made progressive, is not subject to be neutralised by the principle of human increase; for the "means of existence," which

it is admitted that population can in no case overpass, are such as the successive improvements in production make them;-they expand with the increased abundance and cheapness of commodities - they tend continually to advance - and, unless the country be actually retrograding in wealth and industry, they cannot recede.

There is another fallacy which, as it appears to me, pervades much of Mr. Malthus' reasoning, and still more, that of some of his followers, and which has been encouraged perhaps, in some degree, by the very terms of the proposition we are at present considering. When it is said that "population is limited by the means of subsistence," we must be careful not to confine our idea of the subsistence of a country to the mere products of its agriculture; we must not regard a nation like England, as Mr. Malthus has done in one passage of his work*, as if it were a farm of limited extent, the livestock upon which must be proportioned to the quantity of grass, corn, and turnips that will grow upon its surface. A great deal more wheat is raised, as M. Say† truly observes, upon a square mile in Poland than upon the same space in Holland; yet a square mile in Holland contains many more inhabitants than one in Poland. Why? Because that space in Holland, though it yields less corn, yields a much greater aggregate of produce. The value of the things which Holland produces enables it to buy the things which it does not produce. Population is regulated by the aggregate productions of a country, not by any particular article of its produce.

* Vol. ii. p. 114.

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+ Vol. iv. p. 322.