an undoubted fact. What are the causes of its existence, is yet disputed. Equally undetermined is it, as yet, who is responsible for it, and whether it is remediable, or otherwise. - Mr. Malthus says, that it is the natural result of a divine, and therefore inevitable, law the result, as we see, being that of relieving the governing classes of the world from any possible responsibility for the welfare of those below them. Both religion and common sense, however, teach, that the Being who made this wonderful world, in which every part is so perfectly adapted to the production of harmony, could have imposed upon man no law tending to the production of discord; that vice and misery are consequences of human error, and not of divine laws; and that the men who exercise power, and control the societary movement, are responsible for the condition of those around them. Such is the difference between Social Science, and the doctrines of the Ricardo-Malthusian school-the one holding the rich and strong to a high responsibility, while the other shifts the whole of it to the shoulders of those who, being poor and weak, are unable to defend themselves.

The one inculcates, that the great treasury of nature is practically unlimited in its extent; that there exist great natural laws, in virtue of which, food and other raw materials tend to increase more rapidly than population; that it is the duty of the powerful to study and understand those laws; and that if, by reason of failure in the performance of that great duty, vice and misery prevail throughout the world, they, and they alone, must be held accountable therefor. The other teaches that, by reason of the scarcity of fertile soils, the powers of the earth are perpetually diminishing in the ratio borne by them to the mouths requiring to be fed; that there exist great natural laws, in virtue of which, population tends to increase more rapidly than food; that it is the duty of the poor, the weak, and the uninstructed, to understand those laws-failing to do which, the responsibility rests with them, and them alone.

The one holds to a belief in the great law of Christianity, which teaches, that men should do to others, as they would that others should do unto them; that where there are old, blind, lame, or otherwise helpless persons, it is the duty of the strong and the rich to see that they are provided for.-The other teaches, that "charity,

in applying itself to the relief of the distressed, does but augment the number of the poor;" that population is superabundant, and that there is no remedy but that of "starving out the surplus;" that marriage is "a luxury" in which the poor have no right to indulge; ‡ that it is "an enjoyment" to which "the poor have no right until they have made provision for their expected family;" that "labor is a commodity," and that if poor men will marry, and have children, and "we stand between the error and its consequences," which are poverty, wretchedness, and death, we stand between the evil and its cure"-thus intercepting the penalty, and perpetuating "the sin." ||

§ 6. The nearer the consumer to the producer, and the closer the approximation of the prices of rude products, the larger is the production, and the more equitable the distribution the laborer becoming from day to day more master of his future, and of himself. The more distant the producers and consumers, and the wider the separation of prices, the smaller is production, the more inequitable becomes the distribution, and the greater is the tendency towards having the laborer become a mere instrument in the hands of the trader. In the first of these, the feeling of responsibility grows daily, among the poor and the rich. In the last, it declines as steadily in all. Here are propositions of universal truth, by aid of which, past history may be studied - the present may be understood — and the future may be predicted.

British policy tends in the last of the directions above described, and hence it is, that British writers have been led to give us the monstrous doctrines above described.-By some of the advocates of the Malthusian theory, it is asserted, that its author is not to be held responsible for the sayings of his followers; and yet, these latter are but the legitimate results of the teachings of his cele

*CHERBULIEZ: Etudes, p. 73.

JEFFREY. Quoted by Mr. Rickards, Population and Capital, p. 215.
THORNTON, on Over-population.

Edinburgh Review, October, 1849.

Ibid. As in the case of Mr. Malthus above referred to, the author of this article did not venture to carry out his views to their fullest extent. He, therefore, made an exception of "positive death;" but the man who would have us leave the poor to suffer unassisted all the other ills that flesh is heir to," need not have shrunk from adding that last of all, which comes as a relief for all.

brated work no theory having ever yet been published, so well calculated to expel from the bosom of the laborer all feeling of hope in the future for his wife, his children, or himself; none so fitted to fill that of the employer with all uncharitableness; none so calculated to annihilate confidence in the wisdom and beneficence of the Creator. Having made the world, harmonious and beautiful as we see it to be, He could have been under no necessity to institute laws for man's government, in virtue of which, obedience to the great command "Increase and multiply, and subdue the earth"- should be productive of the vice and misery that so much abound. If He has done so, then has He done it of malice prepense-His power and His knowledge being infinite.*

"If doubling is the natural tendency of man, how can it be, that it is impossible in the case of food? Are not the animals and vegetables which constitute the fund from which he draws subsistence, like himself, endowed, and on a grander scale, with the faculty of reproduction? If this faculty, with them as with him, remains sometimes latent, do we not, at others, see it manifesting itself with an intensity that is truly wonderful? That it may always do so, nothing is required, but that it be not prevented. To man was given not only the power to remove existing obstacles, but also that of causing the production of the state of things most favorable to the development of the reproductive faculty that, indeed, being his great mission. Placed in the midst of a superabounding life, of every kind and degree, he seizes it on its passage, but he destroys it not occupying it but for a moment, and then returning it to the great reservoir from which it had been drawn. Consumption, like the production by which it is alimented, and which, in turn, it aliments, is but a transformation — NOTHING BEING BY IT So far, then, from increase of numbers being a cause of weakness and of ruin, it is a cause of wealth and power-the supply of food, instead of flying from before them, becoming more and more abundant as men increase in numbers, and are more enabled to combine together. If, then, human life is, of all machines, the most destructive, it is, too, of all, the most productive.”—PASSY: L'Economiste Belge, Oct. 10, 1858.

DESTROYED.

CHAPTER L.

OF COMMERCE.

Of the Relations of the Sexes.

§ 1. THE American Indian wastes in utter idleness all the time that is not employed in war, or in the chase-leaving to his miserable squaw the labors incident to the preservation of his children, and to the perpetual changes from place to place.-He shoots the deer-leaving to his unhappy helpmate the task of carrying the meat to their wretched home. He helps himself, and when there is enough for both, she may eat. When there is not, she may perish for want of food. The savage of Van Dieman's Land marks his female companion by breaking the joints of her fingers, and knocking out her front teeth-thereafter treating her as a beast of burthen, and paying with stripes for her patient labors.The African buys his wife, and sells his daughters. The Turk fills his harem with slaves, the creatures of his will-holding their lives at their master's pleasure.-Woman is, thus, the slave of man, where man himself is nature's slave.

Tracing the latter upwards, we find him gradually becoming nature's master-substituting mental power for the merely muscular efforts upon which he previously had depended the distinctive qualities of the MAN becoming more and more developed. With every stage of progress, he is enabled to become more fixed at home the work of cultivation slowly, but certainly, taking the place of mere appropriation domestic habits gradually replacing those wandering ones by which he had been distinguished and he himself coming more and more to find "in the comfort and happiness of home, the grammar of life." With each, the wife acquires increased importance as being the mistress of the house, the companion of his joys and his sorrows, and the mother of his children. With each, there is increased demand for

the various powers of the weaker sex-the various individualities of its members becoming more developed as man himself becomes more qualified to assume the post assigned to him. Brain then taking the place of mere muscle, the weak woman finds herself becoming more and more the equal of the man who is strong of arm-passing by slow degrees, from the condition of man's slave towards that of his companion and his friend.

Man's value grows with the growth of wealth-wealth consisting in the power to command nature's services. Woman's value grows with the growth of demand for her peculiar powers that, too, growing with the growth of wealth. Capital is, thus, the great equalizer the demand for female faculties growing in the direct ratio of the development of man's latent powers.

This latter, as we have seen, comes with growth in the power of association, resulting from growing diversity in the demands for human powers the consumer then taking his place by the producer's side-the latent forces of the earth being then stimulated into activity-and land itself becoming divided, with growing tendency towards giving to each and every man a home of his own, to be to him a little savings' bank for all his surplus powers, and for those kindly feelings and affections which await the demands of wife and children. Improvement in woman's condition comes, thus, as man becomes more individualized and self-reliant. For proof of this, we must refer the reader once again to the diagram already so often placed before him, desiring

that he should trace the gradual change in the condition of the sex, as he passes from the region of undivided land and homeless men, on the left, towards that of divided land and cultivated homes, on the right.

Look in what direction we may, we find new evidence, that it VOL. III.-24