them,) but they rob many poor people who live in houses distant from any neighbourhood. In years of plenty, many thousands of them meet together in the mountains, where they feast and riot for many days; and at country weddings, markets, burials, and other the like public occasions, they are to be seen, both men and women, perpetually drunk; cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together."

The other is from a speech in the House of Commons, of Hope, Lord Advocate of Scotland, in 1803. "He ascribed to the establishment of those schools, all that intelligence which was so observable in that part of the United Kingdom, and which so much attracted the attention of strangers who visited it. To it, also, was to be ascribed the good morals, the social order, the loyalty, the paucity of crimes, the proper attendance on divine worship, and the increasing wealth of that part of the country. The paucity of crimes was so remarkable, that there were more convicts transported in one Quarter Sessions from Manchester, than from all Scotland in the course of the year. Executions in Scotland, on an average, do not amount to more than six in the year." See also, for the effect of knowledge on the lower classes, an article (ascribed to Dr. Chalmers) on the Causes and Cure of Pauperism, in the Edinburgh Review, No. 55.

Here, then, are two methods, established by facts, in which what are called the evils of a redundant population are, to a great degree, dispelled, and yet the absolute amount of people is much increased. Let them, then, be called plainly what they are, the evils of bad government, or of ignorance, for which rulers are partly responsible, as they can do much for instructing the community, and

not be attributed to laws of nature. This misnomer has made the Essay on Population so favourite a book with those who profit by the worst part of things as they are, and who never fail to throw it in the faces of all who plead for improvement.

The great difference between Wallace and Malthus is, as to the period at which the "pressure of population upon the limits of subsistence" interposes a bar to human improvement, which the former postpones till the earth shall be fally peopled, and the latter contends has long since arrived in every country.

But mankind have improved, and are making great advances, notwithstanding the operations of this evil principle.

Yet, if it be true that the tendency of population is to increase in a geometrical ratio, and food can only be increased in an arithmetical ratio, we have a law of nature more fruitful in miseries than the worst human institutions, or the grossest ignorance, and presenting a difficulty which can never be surmounted.

Let the first assumption (though never true in fact) be granted. The latter is denied. Food has no tendency to increase but what is given to it by the will and power of man, which may be in any assignable ratio whatever that the limits of the earth will allow. It has been estimated that "the natural fertility of the soil is not equal to the one-thirtieth part of the artificial fertility which may be created by the skill and labour of man." (Gray on the Happiness of States.) In the spontaneous produce there is no progression whatever. The artificial increase may be brought to its maximum in a very few years. If the amount of population be

multiplied by 2 in 25 years, food, instead of being only doubled to keep pace with it, may be multiplied by 4, or 10, or 30. It would not, because nobody would cultivate the ground to raise provision for which there were no consumers. The capability of such an increase exists, nevertheless. But Mr. Malthus would ask, is it always the interest of cultivators to call forth this capability? Perhaps not, sometimes, though it will be generally. But, if not, the blame attaches somewhere else than to the laws of nature, which is what he diligently keeps out of sight.

A reference to the able work of Dr. Purves, (Gray versus Malthus,) from which I will make one short quotation, will supersede enlargement on this subject.

"His (Malthus's) own surveys, excepting those of regions inhabited by men who are not in the state of cultivators, are, in fact, all decidedly against his theory. Is there a country peopled by men who are in that state, in which there is not still a great abundance of the means of additional subsistence in store? Why, then, in the course of so many ages, has not population risen fully to those means of subsistence, or till it exhausted them? A deficiency of these means, of which there is a confessed superabundance every where, cannot surely be the cause.

"The result of the survey of the earth is this: Throughout all her regions, for none of any extent can be excepted, after the lapse, not of hundreds but of thousands of years, there is not found one in which population has at all approached the limits of the subsistence which it is capable of producing. How then can it be possible, that it is a general deficiency of subsistence which

has checked the progress of population? The argument is brief, but it is perfectly decisive."

Here, then, we may quit Mr. Malthus. The difficulty started by Wallace still remains. A happy world would tend to become a full world. Wisdom and virtue, how

ever, might long avert the evil: if they cannot enable man to avoid it, why then, at last, come it must, and so must the end of the world.

NOTE (a)-Page 253.

So much of the argument for the abolition of war, and improvement of mankind, rests upon the authority of divine revelation, that it is not needful, except as matter of speculation, to attempt to say how those great results will be brought about. Probably most theorists have attached a great deal too much importance to improvements in governments, and too little to the spread of knowledge, while Christianity, the most powerful agent, has been generally overlooked. Dr. Purves is an exception; and in concluding with the following admirable passage, in which he connects population, as a principle of improvement, with Christianity, I have only to wish that the "grand catholic doctrines" were already held so uncorruptedly in the countries which he calls Christian, as to be attended with their genuine consequences.

"For several centuries, population has certainly accelerated the rate of its increase throughout Europe and that new-peopled division, America; but perhaps it may be conjectured on good grounds, that its progress has

been slow throughout Africa, and that old and thickpeopled division, Asia, if indeed, upon the whole, it has not been stationary in these portions of the globe. The increase in the two former has evidently been much more rapid since the memorable æra of the Reformation, and particularly during the last century. That great event in the history of the human race in Europe which, it is probable, will ultimately affect the destiny of the whole race, was partly itself produced by the civilization necessarily arising out of the increase of population. The unusual stimulus created by the attainment of mental freedom, or the right of private judgment, which has produced so wonderful a change among the Protestant nations of Europe, and even, through their example, among the Romish, by making men depend more on themselves and their own exertions, has contributed materially towards the rapidity of the increase. And should the whole world ultimately become Christian, this change, with its necessary consequences in favour of liberty and virtue, would certainly also operate with wonderful power in favour of population.

"Nor is this event so improbable as some seem to imagine. Nearly all Europe and America are already Christian. Part of Egypt and Abyssinia professes a nominal Christianity, such as it is; and the British establishments in Africa, particularly at the Cape of Good Hope, will in time Christianize a considerable portion of that ill-peopled division of the globe. Australasia will be all Christian. The immense portion of Asia held by Russia, though as yet so thinly peopled, will be Christian also; and should certain not improbable events take place in Turkey, Christianity, under the auspices of Britain,