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ART. VI. (1.) The True Law of Population shown to be connected with the Food of the People. Second Edition, with a Postscript. By THOMAS DOUBLEDAY, Esq., author of The Italian Wife,' 'Babington,' 'Diocletian,' 'Caius Marius,' Northern Lights,' &c. London Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange.

(2.) On Certain Tests of a Thriving Population. Four Lectures, delivered before the University of Oxford, in Lent Term, 1845. By TRAVERS TWISS, D.C.L., F.R.S., Professor of Political Economy, and Fellow of University College, Oxford. London : Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, Paternoster Row.

POLITICAL economy, as a science, notwithstanding the advances it has made since Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations, is yet in its infancy. Problems, at present most difficult of solution, meet the philosophical inquirer at every step ;-a great deal that confessedly appertains to its province remains debatable ground; and it seems to us that doctrines, which are embraced by many as unquestionable and established principles, are either so mixed up with what is false and untenable; and others, which are palpably fallacious, are so blended with what is true and indisputable, that they are involved in impenetrable obscurity, or lead to conclusions and consequences most pernicious in their practical results. The great question of currency was one of these; we have used our best efforts to disentangle it from its extraneous difficulties, to clear it from the fallacies and sophistries with which it was encumbered, and to establish it on principles of most intelligible certainty; we may not be equally successful in our treatment of "the puzzling subject of population," yet we have a perfect conviction that the theory published by Mr. Malthus, in the year 1798, is liable to as many insuperable objections as the wildest notions of Godwin and Condorcet, of which it professes to be a complete and triumphant refutation. We remember the time when such an avowal would have been hazardous; when even to express a diffidence of the Malthusian doctrine would have been regarded as a political heresy. But time is a great worker of change, and the course of events, in our own history during the last half century and in the history of the civilized world, is subverting old opinions, and eliciting new, especially on the vexed questions involved in the political economy of nations. Scientific men, both on the continent and in this country, think they perceive, and on scientific principles, that the theory of Malthus rests on a sandy foundation, and some of

these go so far as to suspect that he himself was conscious of the fact, and that his attempt to bring into coherence principles the most heterogeneous, and statements the most contradictory, and conclusions as wide as the poles asunder, of which every new edition of his work furnished accumulating proofs, is an evidence that he felt the necessity of shifting his ground, of adapting his views on certain questions so as to conciliate influential readers who might feel strong prejudices against his leading and distinguishing principle-and so softening what he calls "some of its harshest conclusions," as to make it appear in harmony with the principles of an enlightened and liberal philosophy. We fear the truth to have been, that Mr. Malthus, when writing his book, with the express design of putting down the democratic and levelling doctrines of his day, unconsciously to himself, merged the philosopher in the politician. The revolutionary spirit was abroad-thrones were overturned-hierarchies were levelled in the dust. Paine's Agrarian Law, the Rights of Man, Godwin's Political Justice, and the Utopian dreams of the French philosophers, were doing their fearful work on the remaining royalties and feudalities of Europe, which for a season trembled for their existence. Malthus came to the rescue, and having seized, as he thought, upon a principle, that, if wrought out in all its bearings, would support the tottering edifice, propounded the doctrine which has given such celebrity to his name-a doctrine which proclaimed vice and misery to be the necessary consequences of the divine government, and thus relieved the ruling powers of the world from their responsibility, on the ground, that the first law ofour nature-the law which ordained that men should increase and multiply upon the carth-in its direct tendency, is a constant and growing evil, which can only be counteracted by another law equally imperative, and which insures, by an inevitable process, the moral deterioration, and, to a fearful extent, the destruction, of the species; that deterioration and destruction, always amounting to the difference between the geometrical and arithmetical progression of the principle of population and the means of subsistence, which are in a state of perpetual antagonism. His doctrine of moral restraint, as a check to the prolific principle, was an after thought, and amounts to just nothing at all, as in its application it must depend upon circumstances ever varying, which cannot be calculated upon in the natural course of things, and which can only be applied when the proportion of vice and misery in the social system is too great to render it available to any beneficial purpose. A man may be placed in circumstances at the period when he desires to marry, and when nature tells him that the conjugal union would improve his character,

stimulate his industry, and promote his happiness, and ten years afterwards, when he has a family rising around him, a sudden change may take place, he may be reduced to a state of pauperism, not by any failure in the means of subsistence; but by the laws of artificial society, by misgovernment, and the pernicious ascendancy of false principles elevated into a science, and miscalled political economy. Apart from poor-laws and workhouses, those anomalies in the social system, what are the claims of this poor man and his pauper family upon the community, where his labour, when it was employed, was one of the sources of national wealth, and which, with that of his children now rising into maturity, waits to be employed at any moment when it may be required? His claims! Hear the Malthusian doctrine. If his fundamental principle be admitted, Mr. Malthus says boldly, that all the claim which unemployed and starving labourers and artizans have upon society is for voluntary and temporary assist'ance, which might be given as a measure of charity by the richer members; but nothing like a claim of right to support can possibly be maintained till we deny the premises; till we affirm that 'the American increase of population is a miracle, and does not arise from the greater facility of obtaining the means of sub'sistence.' Of course we deny the premises, and the miracle and the doctrine fall to the ground. In God's world, every human creature is entitled to support. In man's world, and under the government of political economists of the Malthus school, it may be otherwise. In this world, the millions may be intruders, and the privileged classes the only inheritors. Yet there is a voice that whispers in the ears of every virtuous and honest child of poverty -You have no right to be a pauper;' and we say, that in this breathing world he has a right to some portion of the great estate which the benevolent Creator has given to man. If you will not allow him to gather it for himself, alleging that it interferes with your vested rights, you are bound to put him in some way in which he may honourably obtain it, without losing his self-respect, and sacrificing the dignity of his intellectual and moral nature.

The system of political economy, of which the Malthusian principle is both the keystone and the foundation, during the half century in which it has given law to statesmen and morality to the privileged orders, has not been barren in the bitter fruits with which it has poisoned and corrupted society to the very core. Influenced by its spirit, what the Edinburgh Review calls 'a long and dire conspiracy' has been carried on against poverty by the world and the world's law. The Cutes,' the Filers,' and the 'Bowleys' of this generation, if not educated

in this school, have so long breathed its atmosphere that they are the very embodiment of its principles. These characters, drawn to the life by Charles Dickens in his 'wise little tale of the Chimes,' are met with every day among the influential classes. Sir Joseph Bowley is, in his way, a great patron of the poor man, and he is quite oracular in deciding that the design of his creation is not that he should associate his enjoyments brutally with food, but that he should feel the dignity of labour; go forth erect into the cheerful morning air, and-stop there.' Mr. Alderman Cute is the very man to drive every unemployed labourer into the gulf of vice and misery, and to keep him there till he is ripe for the executioner; for he is determined to put down want, starvation, and suicide. Mr. Filer,-but he is too good a specimen to be left to mere description, let him speak for himself-he is Malthus's two volumes bound in one. A young blacksmith, in company with his intended bride, is pleasantly interrogated by Mr. Alderman Cute:

"You are making love to her, are you?'

"Yes; and we are going to be married on New Year's day.' "What do you mean?" cried Filer, sharply. 'Married!' 'Why-yes, we are thinking of it, master,' said Richard. rather in a hurry, you see, in case it should be put down first.'

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'We're

"Ah!' cried Filer, with a groan, 'put that down indeed, Alderman, and you'll do something. Married! Married!! The ignorance of the first principles of political economy on the part of these people -their improvidence, their wickedness-is, by heavens! enough to. Now, look at that couple, will you? A man may live to be as old as Methusaleh,' said Mr. Filer, and may labour all his life for the benefit of such people as those; and may heap up facts on figures, facts on figures, facts on figures, mountains high and dry, and he can no more hope to persuade 'em that they have no right or business to be married, than he can hope to persuade 'em that they have no earthly right or business to be born; and that we know they haven't. We reduced it to a mathematical certainty long ago."

The alderman's advice to the intended bride is very characteristic, and is in perfect unison with the tone of Mr. Filer. Both are practical illustrations of the Malthusian doctrine, not as explained away by its author, but as understood and acted upon by practical economists.

'Now, I'm going to give you a word or two of good advice, my girl,' said the Alderman, in his nice, easy way. 'It's my place to give advice, you know, because I'm a justice. You know I'm a justice, don't you? You are going to be married, you say,' pursued the Alderman. Very unbecoming and indelicate in one of your sex; but never mind that. After you are married you'll quarrel with your husband, and come to be a distressed wife. You may think not; but

you will, because I tell you so. Now, I give you fair warning, that I have made up my mind to put distressed wives down, so don't be brought before me. You'll have children-boys. Those boys will grow up bad, of course, and run wild in the streets without shoes and stockings. Mind, my young friend, I'll convict them summarily, every one, for I am determined to put boys without shoes and stockings down. Perhaps your husband will die young, (most likely,) and leave you with a baby. Then you'll be turned out of doors, and wander up and down the streets. Now, don't wander near me, my dear, for I am determined to put all wandering mothers down. All young mothers of all sorts and kinds it's my determination to put down. Don't think to plead illness as an excuse with me, or babies as an excuse with me, for all sick persons and young children (I hope you know the church service, but I'm afraid not) I am determined to put down; and if you attempt desperately, and ungratefully, and impiously, and fraudulently, attempt to drown yourself, or hang yourself, I'll have no pity on you, for I have made up my mind to put all suicide down. If there's one thing,' said the Alderman, with his self-satisfied smile, 'on which I can be said to have made up my mind more than on another, it is to put suicide down; so don't try it on-that's the phrase, isn't it. Ha! ha! Now we understand each other."

Poor Toby, the hero of the tale; from all that he had heard from these expounders of the great law of social humanity, concluded that he had no business to regale himself on tripe; that he had no business with wife or daughter; that he had nothing to do in life at all. He is confirmed in his notion that the poor have no business on the earth. The bells, the usual echoes of his thoughts and feelings, chime as he goes off upon his errand, and there is nothing but the Cute and Filer cant in what they seem to say to him. Facts and figures, facts and figures! put 'em down, put 'em down!'

Say, all this is exaggeration-a caricature; but is it not a likeness rather overcharged. The Edinburgh Review, the great champion of the Malthusian theory, admits the unsoundness of its fundamental principle, and observes,

'Better for the poor man, if we cannot yield him some rightful claim to nature's kindly gifts, he should be wholly set aside as an intruder at her table; but better far for us that we know his claims, and take them to our hearts in time; that we understand how rich in the common inheritance of man even the poorest of the poor should be; that we clearly understand what society has made, of what nature meant to make; that we try in some sort to undo this, and begin by making our laws his security, which have been heretofore his enemy; that even in his guilt, with due regard to its temptations, we treat him as a brother rather than an outcast from brotherhood.'*

• Edinburgh Review for Jan. 1845. Art. The Chimes, by Charles Dickens.'