One condition, however, is necessary to enable a people to multiply their numbers to the full measure of their productive powers, including the several sources of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, -I mean free imports. Unquestionably, if you fetter the exchanges, you put a limit upon the numbers, of a nation. If you adopt an artificial system with regard to trade, you necessarily thwart the laws of nature with regard to population. Whenever a state prohibits its subjects, or in anywise restrains them, from converting the produce of their factories, their forges, or their looms into foreign corn or meat, to that extent it restricts their power of multiplying, and the expansive principle of increase must be curbed and checked in one mode or another. But if exchanges are free, and industry is allowed to seek spontaneously, as it always does when let alone, its most profitable field, then the rate of increase is limited by nothing short of the aggregate produce of the nation's industry-the annual income of its labour of every kind: precisely as the expenditure of an individual-the number of persons whom he can maintain—is measured by his income, from whatever sources, agricultural, mercantile, or professional, it may be derived. Thus, the factories of Lancashire may be said to produce corn, because they produce corn's worth, and the artificers of London produce the beef and mutton which are sent to the metropolis in exchange for their skilful workmanship. The enormously rapid rate of increase in the manufacturing districts strikingly illustrates this truth. Birmingham, Manchester, and Glasgow, produce scarcely any food at all, but they produce

every year and sustain, through the medium of exchange, a prodigiously increasing number of human beings. The same principles which govern the relations of different provinces of the same empire, govern also, where exchanges are free, the relations of different countries with each other. As the agricultural districts of England are to Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, so are Poland and the Western States of America to Great Britain. Observe, I am not now entering into the question of the comparative advantages of agricultural and manufacturing communities: with that controversy I am at present not concerned, though I do not hesitate to express my concurrence in Mr. Malthus' opinion, that a combination of agricultural and manufacturing industry is the condition best adapted to promote the wealth, strength, and security of a nation. confining our view to the immediate subject of population, and discarding as chimerical, after the experience we have had within the last few years, all apprehension as to the capability of the rest of the world to supply corn to the full extent of our power to purchase it*, I am warranted in saying that, in the catalogue of the "means of subsistence," which determines the population of a country, we must include the proceeds of her manufactures as well as of her agriculture. The question, in fact, is not of the relative increase of population and food, but of the relative increase of population and capital, because, population being given, capital is the only limit to

But,

* The apprehensions expressed by Mr. Mill on this point, (Prin. of Polit. Econ. book i. chap. xiii. s. 3.) may be considered as completely disposed of by recent facts.

production. These considerations are most important; for nothing can more effectually dissipate such apprehensions as were just now adverted to, with respect to the prospects of the labouring classes and the possible rate of their multiplication. Great as is the fecundity and marvellous the potential increase of the human species, still more astounding, in a country adapted for it by nature and the genius of the people, is the progress of the mechanical arts, and the result achieved within a comparatively few years by the application of natural agents, such as steam-power, to production. I said before, that wealth increases faster than men. I need scarcely appeal to the statistics of our manufacturing system for proof of that fact. Mr. Senior, in a work* written now many years ago, observed, "Sixty years form a short period in the history of a nation, yet what changes in the state of England and in the southern parts of Scotland have the steam-engine and the cotton machinery effected within the last sixty years! They have almost doubled the population, more than doubled the wages of labour, and nearly trebled the rent of land. They enabled us to endure, not certainly without inconvenience, but yet to endure, a public debt more than trebled, and a taxation more than quadrupled. They changed us from exporters to importers of raw produce, and consequently changed our corn-laws from a bounty on exportation to nearly a prohibition of importation. They have clad the whole world with a light and warm clothing; and made it so easy of

*Treatise on Political Economy, published in the Encyc. Metrop.

acquisition, that we are perhaps scarcely aware of the whole enjoyment that it affords."

He goes on to add some conjectures as to the future: "There appears no reason, unless that reason be to be found among our own commercial institutions" (and these have subsequently been altered), "why the improvements of the next sixty years should not exceed those of the preceding. The cotton machinery is far from perfection the steam-engine is still in its infancy. . . . and it is probable that many other powers of equal efficiency are still undiscovered among the secrets of nature, or, if known, are still unapplied." These anticipations, it is needless to say, have received and are every day receiving a more extended fulfilment.

It appears, then, from what has been said, that if population depends on the means or necessaries of existence, those means, again, are regulated by the total produce of the labour of a country.

In my next lecture I propose to examine into the facts and reasonings on which Mr. Malthus has founded his celebrated dictum-that population has a tendency to increase faster than the means of subsistence.

54

LECTURE III.

ON POPULATION.

THE distinctive doctrine of Mr. Malthus on population is expressed in one short sentence contained in the first chapter of his Essay. It is this:-"That population has a constant tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence."

The whole argument in support of this thesis is comprised in the first two chapters of the first book; all that follows consists either of illustrations drawn from the state of society in different countries of the world, or of reasons adduced, either for the purpose of meeting objections or of recommending the adoption of practical remedies. As the statement of the doctrine itself is so brief, I shall prefer, for the sake of doing it full justice, to express the substance of it in the author's own words; and shall therefore commence by citing the most material passages from the first and second chapters.

Mr. Malthus sets out by declaring the object of his Essay to be, "to examine the effects of one great cause" which has "hitherto impeded the progress of mankind towards happiness." "The cause to which I allude," he says, "is the constant tendency in all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it.”† "It is observed by Dr. Franklin, that there is no limit to the prolific nature of plants or animals but † Vol. i. pp. 1, 2.

* Vol. i. p. 4.