What is more extraordinary, we find the same notions in real legislation. The equal division of the Spartan possessions, by Lycurgus, the establishment of common tables, and prohibition of the precious metals, were, in effect, the annihilation of private property, and the scheme was as successful and enduring as most human institutions in similar circumstances. It appears to have been the desire of Solon to impose a similar government on Athens, but he found it impracticable. In the Mosaic code, the general restitution at the year of Jubilee, forbade the accumulation of landed property, while the acquisition of any other was rendered difficult by the suppression of usury, that is, of interest. The primitive Christians set out with having all things in common.

This coincidence of philosophers and practical men, Heathens and Christians, monarchists and republicans divines and infidels, ancients and moderns, on such a subject, is surprising. However it be accounted for, thus far we may safely go, that great riches and extreme poverty are pernicious and depraving to those who possess the one, or endure the other, and their existence has a very injurious influence upon the intermediate classes of society. To the spread of Christian feeling and political philosophy, we must look for the disposition and wisdom to mitigate this evil, or to do more than mitigate, if more be indeed practicable.

NOTE ()-Page 252.

Wallace, in his Speculations on a perfect Government, (Various Prospects of Mankind, Nature, and Providence,)

looks at both sides of the question; Godwin has taken from him the pro, and Malthus the con; the one so adorning his borrowed argument with his own intellectual treasures, and the other wrapping up his in such a mass of statistical reports, that the original author might at first feel as much difficulty in recognizing his own ideas, as Bloomfield did, when one of his Suffolk ballads was turned into Latin. But although Malthus's confutation of Godwin, is only a repetition of Wallace's confutation of himself, there are differences between these writers of some importance. According to Wallace, the checks to population are distresses produced by "wrong notions, a bad taste, and vicious habits, strengthened by the defects of education and government." According to Malthus, the immediate checks are vice, misery, and moral restraint, and the real and ultimate check, a deficiency of the means of subsistence, which, he contends, can never keep pace with the natural rate of increase of the human species. Wallace never thought of a deficiency of subsistence while there were animals to be slain, fish to be caught, and lands to be cultivated. It will be observed, that his ultimate checks are Malthus's immediate checks, with one remarkable exception; defects of government." To this cause. Godwin refers (very unjustly) almost all the vices and misery that prevail in civil society and Malthus replies, "that, though human institutions appear to be, and indeed often are, the obvious and obtrusive causes of much mischief to society, they are, in reality, light and superficial, in comparison with those deeper-seated causes of evil which result from the laws of nature, and the passions of mankind." This is a strange exhibition-the infidel de

:

"the

nouncing human errors, and the clergyman transferring the charge to Divine Providence !

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Malthus asserts, that "the great art of Dr. Mandeville consisted in misnomers." His own art, or error, may perhaps be found in the same quarter. For instance, by the phrase "means of subsistence," in the Essay on Population, we are not to understand the produce which the earth, or any particular portion of it, is capable of yielding to the labour of its inhabitants. He repeatedly allows, that almost every country in the world is able to support a much larger population than it does at present. Nay, we are not to understand even the actual produce ; for "by an increase in the means of subsistence is here (in the statement of his theory) meant such an increase as will enable the mass of the society to command more food. An increase might certainly take place, which in the actual state of a particular society would not be distributed to the lower classes." (Vol. I. p. 34, Ed. 5.) What he does mean, may be illustrated thus: suppose two sailors, cast away upon an uninhabited island, where they find fruits amply sufficient to support both, but one being stronger than the other, takes possession of the whole, makes a slave of his comrade, compels him to toil, and denies him a share of the wholesome food of which abundance is attainable; the latter is reduced to feed upon noxious substances, becomes diseased, is starved, dies.-This, Malthus calls keeping population down to the level of subsistence, or limiting it by a deficiency of the means of subsistence. Is not this a misnomer? It was the bad government of Tom, the strong sailor, that destroyed Harry, the weak one, while the means of subsistence hung unplucked upon the tree. Or another

supposition may be made, that both of them were too idle to climb the tree for wholesome food, or too ignorant to estimate its superiority; and therefore prematurely depopulated our island by contenting themselves with the limited and unwholesome supply which was nearer at hand. To this very different case, Malthus applies the same terms, and with as much impropriety. In his tour of misery round the world, cases analogous to these, even according to his own statements, are continually occurring. As an example of the first supposition, take Egypt or Turkey, where the rapacity, oppression, and bad policy of the government, starve a population whose numbers, under British institutions, might be at least quadrupled, and every individual four times as well supplied. For the second, take the American Indians. A dozen hunters cannot exist upon a tract of country which would well support a hundred shepherds, or a thousand agriculturalists. (Book i. Ch. iv. x.) It seems absurd to say that population is kept down, in these instances, by the laws of nature refusing the means of subsistence; the means are there; and their being called forth is only prevented by the despotism of the rulers, or the idleness and ignorance of the inhabitants. These are the real evils, and they are curable, by judicious reformation on the one hand, and the diffusion of knowledge, the parent of improved manners and habits, on the other.

Montesquieu truly observes, "Les païs ne sont pas cultivé en raison de leur fertilité, mais en raison de leur liberté." Had America remained the dependant of England, those immense resources would not have been broken up, which now yield plenty and wealth to the

outcasts of Europe. The French Revolution, whatever its evils, has increased at once the numbers, respectability, and enjoyments of the peasantry.

Scotland is a demonstration of the power of instruction to produce similar effects. Its population has increased largely during the last century, but that the means of subsistence (in Malthus's sense of the phrase) and the means of enjoyment have increased still more, is evident from the following authentic statements. The first is from Fletcher's Second Discourse on the Affairs of Scotland, and refers to the year 1698.

"There are at this day in Scotland (besides a great many poor families very meanly provided for by the church-boxes, with others who, by living upon bad food, fall into various diseases) two hundred thousand people begging from door to door. These are not only no way advantageous, but a very grievous burden to so poor a country. And though the number of them be perhaps double to what it was formerly, by reason of this present great distress, yet in all times there have been about one hundred thousand of those vagabonds, who have lived without any regard or subjection either to the laws of the land, or even those of God and nature; fathers incestuously accompanying with their own daughters, the son with the mother, and the brother with the sister. magistrate could ever discover, or be informed, which way one in a hundred of these wretches died, or that ever they were baptized. Many murders have been discovered among them; and they are not only a most unspeakable oppression to poor tenants, (who, if they give not bread, or some kind of provision, to perhaps forty such villains in one day, are sure to be insulted by

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