Book II, Chapter XI: Of the Mode in Which the Quantity of the Product Affects Population, Section I.: Of Population, as

Having, in Book I, investigated the production of the articles necessary to the satisfaction of human wants, and in the present Book, traced their distribution among the different members of the community, let us now further extend our observations to the influence those products exercise upon the number of individuals, of which the community is composed; that is to say, upon population.

In her treatment of all organic bodies, nature seems to neglect the individual, and afford protection only to the species. Natural history presents very curious examples of her extraordinary care to perpetuate the species; but the most powerful means she adopts for that purpose, is the multiplication of germs in such vast profusion, that notwithstanding the immense variety of accidents occurring to prevent their early development, or destroy them in the progress to maturity, there are always left more than sufficient to perpetuate the species. Did not accident, destruction, or failure of the means of development, check the multiplication of organic existence, there is no animal or plant that might not cover the face of the globe in a very few years.

This faculty of infinite increase is common to man, with all other organic bodies; and although his superior intelligence continually enlarges his own means of existence, he must sooner or later arrive at the ultimum.

Animal existence depends upon the gratification of one sole and immediate want, that of food and sustenance; but man is enabled, by the faculty of communication with his species, to barter one product for another, and to regard the value, rather than the nature, of the product. The producer and owner of a piece of furniture of twenty dollars value, may consider himself as possessing as much human food, as may be procurable for that price. And with respect to the relative price of products, it is in all cases determined by the intensity of the desire, the degree of utility in each product for the time being. We may safely take it for granted, that mankind in general will not barter an object of more, for one of less urgent necessity. In a season of agricultural scarcity, a larger quantity of furniture will be given for a smaller quantity of human aliment; but it is invariably true, that whenever barter takes place, the object given on one side is worth that given on the other, and that the one is procurable for the other.

Trade and barter, as we have seen above, adapt the products to the general nature of the demand. The objects, whether of food or raiment, or of habitation, for which the strongest desire is felt, are of course the most in request; and the wants of each family or individual, are more or less fully satisfied, in proportion to the ability to purchase these objects; which ability depends upon the productive means and exertion of each respectively; in plain terms, upon the revenue of each respectively. Thus, in the end, if we sift this matter to the bottom, we shall find, that families, and nations, which are but aggregations of families, subsist wholly on their own products; and that the amount of product in each case necessarily limits the numbers of those who can subsist upon it.

Such animals as are incapable of providing for future exigencies, after they are engendered, if they do not fall a prey to man, or some of their fellow brutes, perish the moment they experience an imperative want, which they have not the means of gratifying. But man has so many future wants to provide for, that he could not answer the end of his creation, without a certain degree of providence and forethought; and this provident turn can alone preserve the human species from part of the evils it would necessarily endure, if its numbers were to be perpetually reduced by the process of destructive violence.

Yet notwithstanding the forethought ascribed to man, and the restraints imposed on him by reason, legislation, and social habits, the increase of population is always evidently co-extensive, and even something more than co-extensive, with the means of subsistence. It is a melancholy but an undoubted fact, that, even in the most thriving countries, part of the population annually dies of mere want. Not that all who perish from want absolutely die of hunger; though this calamity is of more frequent occurrence than is generally supposed. I mean only that they have not at command all the necessaries of life, and die for want of some part of those articles of necessity. A sick or disabled person may, perhaps, require nothing more than a little rest, or medical advice, together with, perhaps, some simple remedy, to set him up again; but the requisite rest, or advice, or remedy, is denied, or not afforded. A child may require the attentions of the mother, but the mother may perhaps be taken away to labour, by the imperious calls of necessity; and the child perish through accident, neglect, or disease. It is a fact well established by the researches of all who have turned their attention to statistics, that out of an equal number of children of wealthy and of indigent parents, at least twice as many of the latter die in infancy as of the former. In short, scanty or unwholesome diet, the insufficient change of linen, the want of warm and dry clothing, or of fuel, ruin the health, undermine the constitution, and sooner or later bring multitudes of human beings to an untimely end; and all, that perish in consequence of want beyond their means to supply, may be said to die of want.

Thus, to man, particularly in a forward state of civilization, a variety of products, some of them in the class of what have been denominated immaterial products, are necessaries of existence; these are multiplied in a degree proportionate to the desire for them, respectively, because its intensity causes a proportionate elevation of their price: and it may be laid down as a general maxim, that the population of a state is always proportionate to the sum of its production in every kind. This is a truth acknowledged by most writers on political economy, however various and discordant their opinions on most other points.

It appears to me, however, that one very natural consequence, deducible from this maxim, has escaped their observation; which is, that nothing can permanently increase population, except the encouragement and advance of production; and that nothing can occasion its permanent diminution, but such circumstances as attack production in its sources.

The Romans were forever making regulations to repair the loss of population, occasioned by their state of perpetual external warfare. Their censors preached up matrimony; their laws offered premiums and honours to plurality of children; but these measures were fruitless. There is no difficulty in getting children; the difficulty lies in maintaining them. They should have enlarged their internal production, instead of spreading devastation amongst their neighbours. All their boasted regulations did not prevent the effectual depopulation of Italy and Greece, even long before the inroads of the barbarous northern hordes.

The edict of Louis XVI. in favour of marriage, awarding pensions to those parents who should have ten, and larger ones to those who should have twelve children, was attended with no better success. The premiums that monarch held out in a thousand ways to indolence and uselessness, were much more adverse, than such poor encouragements could be conducive, to the increase of population.

It is the fashion to assert, that the discovery of the new world has tended to depopulate old Spain; whereas her depopulation has resulted from the vicious institutions of her government, and the small amount of her internal product, in proportion to her territorial extent. The most effectual encouragement to population is, the activity of industry, and the consequent multiplication of the national products. It abounds in all industrious districts, and, when a virgin soil happens to co-operate with the exertions of a community, whence idleness is altogether discarded, its rapid increase is truly astonishing. In the United States of America, population has been doubling in the course of twenty years.

For the same reasons, although temporary calamities may sweep off multitudes, yet, if they leave untainted the source of reproduction, they are sure to prove more afflicting to humanity, than fatal to population. It soon trenches again upon the limit, assigned by the aggregate of annual production. Messance has given some very curious calculations, whereby it appears, that after the ravages occasioned by the famous plague of Marseilles in 1720, marriages throughout Provence were more fruitful than before. The Abbé d'Expilly comes to the same conclusion. The same effect was observable in Prussia, after the plague of 1710. Although it had swept off a third of the population, the tables of Sussmilch show the number of births, which, before the plague, amounted annually to about 26,000, to have advanced in the year following, 1711, to no less than 32,000, It might have been supposed, that the number of marriages, after so terrible a mortality, would have been at least considerably reduced, on the contrary, it actually doubled; a strong indication of the tendency of population to keep always on a level with the national resources.

The loss of population is not the greatest calamity resulting from such temporary visitations; the first and greatest is, the misery they occasion to the human race. Great multitudes can not be swept from the land of the living by pestilence, famine or war, without the endurance of a vast deal of suffering and agony, by numbers of sentient beings; besides the pain, distress, and misery of the survivors; the destitution of widows, orphans, brothers, sisters, and parents. It is a subject of additional regret, if among the rest, there happen to fall one or two of those superior and enlightened men, whose single talents and virtues have more effect upon the happiness and wealth of nations, than the grovelling industry of a million of ordinary mortals.

Moreover, a great loss of human beings, arrived at maturity, is certainly a loss of so much acquired wealth or capital; for every grown person is an accumulated capital, representing all the advances expended during a course of many years, in training and making him what he is. A bantling a day old by no means replaces a man of twenty; and the well-known expression of the Prince de Condé, on the victorious field of Senef, was equally absurd and unfeeling.

The destructive scourges of the human species, therefore, if not injurious to population, are at least an outrage on humanity; on which account alone, their authors are highly criminal.

But though such temporary calamities are more afflicting to humanity than hurtful to the population of nations, far other is the effect of a vicious government, acting upon a bad system of political economy. This latter attacks the very principle of population, by drying up the sources of production; and since the numbers of mankind, as before seen, always approach nearly to the utmost limits the annual revenue of the nation will admit of, if the government reduce that revenue by the pressure of intolerable taxation, forcing the subject to sacrifice part of his capital, and consequently diminishing the aggregate means of subsistence and reproduction possessed by the community, such a government not only imposes a preventive check on further procreation, but may be fairly said to commit downright murder; for nothing so effectually thins the effective ranks of mankind, as privation of the means of subsistence.

The evil effects of monastic establishments upon population, have been severely and justly inveighed against; but the mode, in which they operate, has been misunderstood; it is the idleness, not the celibacy, of the monastic orders, that ought to be censured. They put their lands into cultivation, it is true, but where is the merit of that? Would the lands remain untilled, if the monastic system were abolished? So far from that evil resulting from the abolition, wherever these establishments have been converted into manufactories, of which the French revolution has offered many examples, equal agricultural produce has continued to be raised, and the produce of the manufacturing industry has been all clear gain; while the increased total product, thus created, has been followed by an increase of population also.

From these premises, may likewise be drawn this further conclusion; that the inhabitants of a country are not more scantily supplied with the necessaries of life, because their number is on the increase; nor more plentifully, because it is on the decline. Their relative condition depends on the relative quantity of products they have at their disposal; and it is easy to conceive these products to be considerable, though the population be dense; and scanty, though the population be thinly spread. Famine was of more frequent occurrence in Europe during the middle ages, than it has been of late years, although Europe is evidently more thickly peopled at present. The product of England, during the reign of queen Elizabeth, was not nearly so abundant as it is now, although her population was then less by half; and the population of Spain, reduced to but eight millions, enjoys not nearly so much affluence, as when it amounted to twenty-four.

Some writers have considered a dense population as an index of national prosperity; and, doubtless, it is a certain sign of enlarged national production. But general prosperity implies the general diffusion and abundance of all the necessaries, and some of the superfluities of life amongst all classes of the population. Some parts of India and of China are oppressed with population, and with misery also; but their condition would be nowise improved by thinning its numbers, at least if it were brought about by a diminution of the aggregate product. Instead of reducing the numbers of the population, it were far more desirable to augment the gross product; which may always be effected by superior individual activity, industry, and frugality, and the better administration, that is to say, the less frequent interference of public authority.

But it will naturally be asked, if the population of a country regularly keeps pace with its means of subsistence, what will become of it in years of scarcity and famine?

Hear what Stewart says on the subject: "There is a very great deception as to the difference between crops; a good year for one soil is bad for another." "It is far from being true," he continues, "that the same number of people consume always the same quantity of food. In years of plenty, every one is well fed;—food is not so frugally managed; a quantity of animals are fatted for use;—and people drink more largely, because all is cheap. A year of scarcity comes; the people are ill fed; and when the lower classes come to divide with their children, the portions are brought to be very small;" instead of saving, they consume their previous hoard; and after all, it is unhappily too true, that part of that class must suffer and perish.

This calamity is most common in countries overflowing with population, like Hindostan, or China, where there is little external or maritime commerce, and where the poorer classes have always been strictly limited to the mere necessaries of life. There, the produce of ordinary years is barely sufficient to allow this miserable pittance; consequently, the slightest failure of the crop leaves multitudes wholly destitute of common necessaries, to rot and perish by wholesale. All accounts agree in representing that famines are, for this reason, very frequent and destructive in China and many parts of Hindostan.

Commerce in general, and maritime commerce in particular facilitates the interchange of products, even with the most remote countries, and thus renders it practicable to import articles of subsistence, in return for several other kinds of produce; but too great a dependence on this resource, leaves the nation at the mercy of every natural or political occurrence, which may happen to intercept or derange the intercourse with foreign countries. The intercourse must then be preserved at all events, no matter whether by force or fraud, competition must be got rid of by every means, however unjustifiable; a separate province, or weak ally, perhaps, is obliged to purchase the national products, under restrictions equally galling, as the exaction of actual tribute; and a commercial monopoly enforced, even at the hazard of a war; all which evils make the state of the nation extremely precarious indeed.

The produce of England, in articles of human subsistence, had undoubtedly increased largely towards the end of the 18th century; but its produce in articles of apparel and household furniture had probably increased still more rapidly. The consequence has been, that immensity of production, which enables her to multiply her population beyond what the produce of her soil can support, and to bear up under the pressure of public burthens, to which there is no parallel nor even approximation. But England has suffered severely, whenever foreign markets have been shut against her produce; and she has sometimes been obliged to resort to violent means to preserve her external intercourse. She would act wisely, perhaps, in discontinuing those encouragements, that impel fresh capital into the channels of manufacture and external commerce, and directing it rather towards that of agricultural industry. It is probable, that in that case, several districts, which have not yet received the utmost cultivation of which they are susceptible, particularly many parts of Scotland and Ireland, would raise agricultural produce enough to purchase most part, if not the whole, of the surplus product of her manufactures and commerce beyond her present consumption. Great Britain would thereby create for herself a domestic consumption, which is always the surest and the most advantageous. Her neighbours, no longer offended by the necessarily jealous and exclusive nature of her policy, would probably lay aside their hostile feelings, and become willing customers. But, after all, if her manufactured should still be disproportioned to her agricultural produce, what is there to prevent her from adopting a system of judicious colonization, and thus creating for herself fresh markets for the produce of her domestic industry in every part of the globe, whence she might derive, in return, a supply of food for her superfluous population?

In this particular, the position of France appears to be precisely opposite to that of Great Britain. It would seem, that her agricultural product is equal to the maintenance of a much larger manufacturing and commercial population. The face of the country presents the picture of high and general cultivation; but the villages and country towns are, for the most part, surprisingly small, poor, ill-built, and ill-paved, the few shops scantily supplied, and the public houses neither neat nor comfortable. It is plain, the agricultural product must either be less than the appearance would indicate, or it must be consumed in a thriftless and unprofitable manner; probably both these causes are in operation.

In the first place, the production is far less than it might be; and that is chiefly owing to three causes:—1. The want of capital, particularly in enclosures, live stock, and amelioration: 2. The indolence of the cultivators, and the too general neglect of weeding, trimming the hedges, clearing the trees of moss, destroying insects, &c. &c. 3. The neglect of a proper alternation of crops, and of the most approved methods of cultivation.

In the second place, the consumption is unthrifty and unprofitable; for a great part of it is mere waste, and yields no human gratification whatever. To speak of one article alone, that is, of firing, which is an object of great value in districts, where coal and wood are scarce; the waste of it is enormous in the huts of the peasantry lighted as they often are by the door-way only, and admitting the rain down the chimney while the fire is burning. Unwholesome beverage or food, and the indulgence of the alehouse, are like injurious modes of consumption.

In fine, towns and villages would be more thickly spread, and would besides present an appearance of greater affluence, were the generality of the inhabitants more active and industrious, and actuated by the laudable emulation, tinctured perhaps with some little vanity, rather of possessing every object of real utility, and exhibiting in their domestic arrangements the utmost order and neatness, than of living in indolence upon the rent of a trifling patrimony, or the scanty salary of some useless public employ. The small proprietor, with an income of 3 or 400 dollars per annum, just sufficient to vegetate upon, might double or triple it perhaps by adding the revenue derivable from personal industry; and even those engaged in useful occupations do not push them to the full extent of their activity and intelligence. Moreover, the spirit of inquiry and improvement has probably been disheartened by the example of frequent ill success; although the failure has commonly been occasioned by the want of judgment, perseverance, and frugality.

National population is uniformly proportionate to the quantum of national production; but it may vary locally within the limits of each state, according to the favourable or unfavourable operation of local circumstances. A particular district will be rich, because its soil is fertile, its inhabitants industrious, and possessed of capital accumulated by their frugality; in like manner as a family will surpass its neighbours in wealth, because of its superior intelligence and activity. The boundaries and political constitutions of states affect population only, inasmuch as they affect the national production. The influence of religion and national habits upon population is precisely analogous. All travellers agree, that protestant are both richer and more populous than catholic countries; and the reason is, because the habits of the former are more conducive to production.