Chapter IX.: Conclusion.

There can be no conclusion more natural or more profitable to such an enquiry as has formed the scope of the present volume, than an attempt to fix a just estimate of the state of man upon earth.

Man is perhaps the only animal in the world endowed with the faculty we call taste. Man is the only animal capable of persevering and premeditated industry, with the fruits of which the land and even the water of our globe are interspersed and adorned. Man is the only creature susceptible of science and invention, and possessing the power of handing down his thoughts in those permanent records, called books. Man has in him the seeds of sentiment and virtue, and the principle of comprehensive affections, patriotism and philanthropy. The human species is capable of improvement from age to age, by means of which capacity we have arrived at those refinements of mechanical production and science, which have been gradually called into existence; while all other animals remain what they were at first, and the young of no species becomes better or more powerful by the experience of those that went before him.

It cannot be but that a being so gloriously endowed should be capable of much enjoyment and happiness. Our tastes and our judgment are fitted to add indefinitely to our pleasures: we admire the works of God and the works of man. Our affections are to us a source of enjoyments, variegated and exquisite. Self-approbation and self-complacency are main pillars of human happiness. The consciousness of freedom and the pride of independence are inexhaustible sources of joy. There is a peculiar and an inexpressible delight which belongs to perseverance and a resolved constancy in the operations of science, in the cultivation of mind, and in a course of virtuous action. We are delighted with these things in solitude and intent application; and society in such pursuits increases our delight. Indeed, when we do but name the word society, we touch a magical chord which introduces us at once to a whole volume of peculiar felicities.

Yet the state of man on earth is not a state of unmingled happiness. We have many pains and infirmities. Every stage of our existence from the cradle to the grave, has its peculiar compartment in this magazine of ills. Our cares and anxieties are innumerable. All those things which, presented to us in one aspect, are sources of pleasure, may, if reversed, become equally sources of affliction. The generous ambition of the human heart, if disappointed, preys upon our vitals. Our affections, those conduits of exquisite enjoyment, are often turned into the means of agony. Man is an erring creature, and may become the victim of remorse; or, if his heart is hardened in this respect, he may be made the object of the resentment and vengeance of his fellow-creatures.

Beside all this, it is now time to add, that human institutions may be the source of much mischief to those they were framed to control. There have been such things as despotism and as tyranny. Society is the source of innumerable pleasures; without society we can scarcely he said to live; yet in how many ways does society infringe upon the independence and peace of its members. Man delights to control and to inforce submission upon his fellow-man; human creatures desire to exercise lordship and to display authority. One class and division of the community, is taught, to think its interests adverse to the interests of another class and division of the community. The institution of property has been the source of much improvement and much admirable activity to mankind; yet how many evils to multitudes of our species have sprung from the institution of property. The same may be said of the inequality of conditions.

All that is here stated is very much of the nature of common-place. Every man has heard it; and every man knows it. Yet it is sometimes of great use that common-places should be recollected; and the author would deserve the name of absurdly fastidious, who should resolve upon all occasions to avoid them. Those which have been here introduced are particularly proper on the present occasion.

Between the advantages and disadvantages attendant on the state of man on earth there is one thing that seems decisively to turn the balance in favour of the former. Man is to a considerable degree the artificer of his own fortune. We can apply our reflections and our ingenuity to the remedy of whatever we regret. Speaking in a general way, and within certain liberal and expansive limitations, it should appear that there is no evil under which the human species can labour, that man is not competent to cure. This is a source of unspeakable consolation to us in two ways: first, we can bear with some cheerfulness the ill which for ourselves or our posterity we have the power to remedy: and, secondly, this power inherent in our nature is the basis of that elasticity and exultation which are most congenial to the mind of man. “We are perplexed, but not in despair; we are persecuted, but not forsaken; we are cast down, but not destroyed.” Man, in the most dejected condition in which a human being can be placed, has still something within him which whispers him, “I belong to a world that is worth living in.”

Such was, and was admitted to be the state of the human species, previously to the appearance of the Essay on Population. Now let us see how, under the ascendancy of Mr. Malthus's theory, all this is completely reversed.

The great error of those who sought to encourage and console their fellow-beings in this vale of tears, was, we are told, in supposing that any thing that we could do, could be of substantial benefit in remedying the defects of our social existence. “Human institutions are light and superficial, mere feathers that float upon the surface.” The enemy that hems us in, and reduces our condition to despair, is no other than “the laws of Nature, which are the laws of God.”

Nor is this by any means the worst of the case. The express object of Mr. Malthus's writing was to prove how pernicious was their error, who aimed at any considerable and essential improvement in human society. The only effectual checks upon that excess of population, which, if unchecked, would be sufficient in no long time to people all the stars, are vice and misery. The main and direct moral and lesson of the Essay on Population, is passiveness. Human creatures may feel that they are unfortunate and unhappy; but it is their wisdom to lie still, and rather “bear the ills they have, than fly to others that they know not of.”

The two main propositions that are revealed to us by the Essay on Population are, 1. the kind of mortality and massacre that is continually taking place in the midst of us, without our having been aware of it: and, 2. the conduct which it is our wisdom to adopt under the unhappy condition of man upon earth.

It has been already sufficiently proved in the proper place, that, according to Mr. Mathus's principles, all the children in each generation on this side of the globe are born, that can be born . The difference between the population of Europe on the one hand, and of the United States on the other, is not that a smaller number of children are born in the former case, but that a greater number are cut off in their infancy. If the present population of England and Wales is ten millions, it would twenty-five years hence be twenty millions, and so on for ever, were it not for the hitherto unobserved destruction of the young of the human species on this side of the globe. That man is mortal we sufficiently knew; we had studied and rehearsed, time out of mind, the various accidents that waylay us in every stage of our existence; and the thought of this was sufficient to make us sober, if not to make us sad: but Mr. Malthus has discovered to us the hourly destruction of millions upon millions more, of which we had no previous knowledge. And how are they destroyed? “By all those causes,, whether arising from vice or misery, which in various degrees and diversified manners contribute to shorten the natural duration of human life.” “Every loss of a child from the consequences of poverty [and, were it not for these losses, the population of England and Wales would double every twenty-five years] must evidently be preceded and accompanied by great misery to various individuals.”

The second of the two main propositions that are revealed to us by the Essay on Population is the conduct which it is our wisdom to adopt under the unhappy condition of man upon earth. Vice and misery are the main securities upon which we are to depend: it is they that make the condition of man upon earth so tolerable as we find it. The most pernicious error into which we can fall, and which is beyond all others to be deprecated, would be the inconsiderate attempt materially to improve the state of society, to relieve the hardships under which the greater part of our species at present labour, and to introduce equality, or any approach towards equality, in the conditions of men. Since vice and misery are discovered to be the mala bene posita, the indispensible evils, without which the pillars of creation would tumble into ruins, we must be careful to touch them with the utmost tenderness, or rather we must be careful not to touch them on any account. They are the mysterious treasures, laid up in the sanctuary of the covenant between God and his creatures.

Look now upon this picture and on this, the faithful representment of two worlds! One is the world I was born in, and in which I lived for forty years: the other is the world of Mr. Malthus.

In the Old World (if I may be allowed so to denominate it) there was something exhilarating and cheerful. We felt that there was room for a generous ambition to unfold itself. If we were under the cloud or the grief of calamity, we had still something to console us. We might animate our courage with reflections on the nature of man, and support our constancy by recollecting the unlimited power we possess to remedy our evils, and better our condition. We felt, as I said before, that we “belonged to a world worth living in.”

Mr. Malthus blots out all this with one stroke of his pen. By a statement of six pages, or rather of six lines, he undertakes to shew us what a fool the man is who should be idle enough to rejoice in such a world as this. He tells us that our ills are remediless, and that human institutions, and the resources of human ingenuity, are feathers, capable of doing little harm, and no more competent to produce us benefit. We are fallen into the hands of a remorseless stepmother, Nature: it is in vain that we struggle against her laws; the murderous principle of multiplication will be for ever at work; the viper-brood of passion, the passion between the sexes, the fruitful source of eternal mischiefs, we may condemn, but must never hope to control. He forbids us to augur well of the general weal, for all is despair; he forbids us to attempt to raise or improve our condition, for every such attempt is destructive.

I can liken Mr. Malthus's world to nothing but a city under the severe visitation of a pestilence. All philanthropy and benevolence are at an end. To serve our fellow-citizens is a hopeless undertaking. With hope, the very wish to serve them expires. We no longer love, where to benefit is impossible. “It were all one,” as Shakespear says, “that I should love a bright particular star, and think to wed it.” Our only refuge then is in pure self-indulgence, and an entire contempt for, and oblivion of our fellow-creatures. Boccaccio's description of some of his contemporaries in the great plague of Florence is excellently to this purpose. “The reflections of these men,” says he, “led them to a determination sufficiently cruel: and this was, to shun and fly from their unfortunate and suffering countrymen. They shut themselves up in houses free from the infection, and sought to forget the very existence of their fellow-citizens. They nourished themselves with the most delicate meats and the finest wines they could procure. Nay, they sung, they danced, they laughed, they jested, and considered this, as far as they were concerned, to be a sovereign remedy for every evil.” It is wonderful how exactly this coincides with what is recommended in the Essay on Population, concerning the neglect to be shewn to the poor, and the wastefulness of the rich.

Till Mr. Malthus wrote, political writers and sages had courage. They said, “The evils we suffer are from ourselves; let us apply ourselves with assiduity and fortitude to the cure of them.” This courage was rapidly descending, by the progress of illumination and intellect, to a very numerous portion of mankind; and the sober and considerate began deliberately to say, “Let us endeavour to remedy the evils of political society, and mankind may then be free and contented and happy.” Mr. Malthus has placed himself in the gap. He has proclaimed, with a voice that has carried astonishment and terror into the hearts of thousands, the accents of despair. He has said, The evils of which you complain, do not lie within your reach to remove: they come from the laws of nature, and the unalterable impulse of human kind.

But Mr. Malthus does not stop here. He presents us with a code of morality conformable to his creed.

This code consists principally of negatives.

We must not preach up private charity. For charity, “if exerted at all, will necessarily lead” to pernicious consequences.

We must not preach up frugality. For the “waste among the rich, and the horses kept by them merely for their pleasure, operate like granaries, and tend rather to benefit than to injure the lower classes of society.”

We must deny that the poor, whatever may be the causes or degree of their distress, “have a right to support.”

We must maintain that every man “has a right to do what he will with his own.”

We must preach down marriage. We must affirm that no man has a right to marry, without a fair “prospect of being able to support a family.” “They should not have families, if they cannot support them.” And this rule is strictly to govern our treatment of the married man in distress. “To the punishment of Nature he should be left, the punishment of want. He should be taught to know that the laws of Nature, which are the laws of God, have doomed him and his family to suffer for disobeying their repeated admonitions.”

What havock do these few maxims make with the old received notions of morality!

It has not been enough attended to, how complete a revolution the Essay on Population proposes to effect in human affairs. Mr. Malthus is the most daring and gigantic of all innovators.

To omit all other particulars, if we embrace his creed, we must have a new religion, and a new God.

Mr. Malthus's is not the religion of the Bible. On the contrary it is in diametrical opposition to it.

Christianity is, and has always been called, a religion of charity and love. It is rigorous in prescribing the duties of the rich, as well as of the poor. It does not admit that we “have a right to do what we will with our own.” On the contrary, it teaches that we have nothing that we can strictly call our own, that the rich are but stewards and administrators of the benefits of Providence, and that we shall be austerely called to give an account of every talent that is intrusted to us. We are taught to consider our fellow-creatures in distress as our brothers, and to treat them accordingly. “Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these, ye have done it to me.”

But, if we embrace the creed of Mr. Malthus, we must not only have a new religion, but a new God.

The God of the Essay on Population, the God, as we are there informed, of Nature, and the author of her laws, has given us laws, “the deep-seated causes of evil,” in comparison with which all that human ingenuity can effect of harm or of good, is but as a feather. These deep-seated causes of evil we can never counteract, nor can any thing extract their venom, unless we were capable of that moral restraint, which Mr. Malthus has in one instance “allowed himself to suppose,” but which he has no expectation or belief that man ever will or can reduce into practice. Such are the laws, according to him, in conformity to which God has built the world, and such is the imbecil and impotent creature which he has planted here to inhabit it. The irresistible strength of these laws, and the weakness of man, are equally his work. It is his breath that has pronounced the fiat, “Vice and misery shall be the concomitants of the human species as long as they exist; I have made for them a law of multiplication so enormous, that the action of these causes shall be regularly required to cut off the excessive increase as fast as it appears.” Lo now, and see, whether this is the God, which any system of religion on earth has taught men to recognise. Lo now, and see, whether this is the God, which serious men in enlightened Europe are prepared to praise and adore.

It is but just that those who adopt the creed of Mr. Malthus, should understand it in all its bearings, and be made aware of the full extent of the conclusions into which it leads; while, on the other hand, those by whom these conclusions are regarded with aversion, will perhaps feel themselves indebted to a book, by which the premises on which they are built, are, I trust, fully refuted.

The general inferences from the statements and reasonings of the preceding sheets are plainly these. There is in man, absolutely speaking, a power of increasing the number of his species. Yet the numbers of mankind appear not to have increased on the whole within the limits of authentic profane history. To speak from the best authorities to which we have access, the increase has never amounted to the rate of a doubling in one hundred years, nor has ever proceeded at that rate for a hundred years together. And, till human affairs shall be better and more auspiciously conducted than they have hitherto been under the best governments, there will be no absolute increase in the numbers of mankind. This is enough for Mr. Malthus, arid the other adversaries of the dignity and honour of human nature. For myself and those who hope better things, a doubling of the numbers of mankind once in an hundred years, has nothing in it, which can afford rational ground of alarm. We have but too cogent reasons to believe, that a regular and uninterrupted progress of increase is a thing that cannot for a long time be looked for. And, at all events, we may be as well assured, as it is possible to be upon a subject of this sort, that the progressive power of increase in the numbers of mankind, will never outrun the progressive power of improvement which human intellect is enabled to develop in the means of subsistence.

I am sensible that what I have written may be regarded in some respects as a book about nothing. The proposition of which it treats appears to have been established by universal consent from the days of Homer. I may perhaps however be allowed the merit of having brought new arguments in aid of old truth. In these times of innovation (innovation, one of the noblest characteristics of man) a pernicious novelty has been started, and has obtained for the time a general success. It seemed necessary that some one should stoop to the task of refuting it. Too happy, if I may flatter myself with the fate hereafter that Swift predicates of Marvel, whose “Answer to Parker is still read with pleasure, though the positions it exposes have long ceased to have any supporters.” I have accordingly endeavoured that my volume should contain some reflections and trains of thinking not unprofitable for other purposes than those for which they were originally produced. Add to which, if I have contributed to place a leading point of political economy on a permanent basis, my labour may not in that respect be found altogether fugitive and nugatory.

It is stated in the front of the Essay on Population, that it is to my writings that the work is indebted for its origin.

Essay on Population, Vol. Ill, p. 344, note.

P. 139,140.

Essay on Population, First Edition, p. 177; Fifth Edition, Vol. II, p. 246.

See below, p. 135, et seqq.

This seems to be an instance of the excessive multiplication in question. By what writer has the principle been “mainly supported,” but Mr. Malthus?

See further to the same purpose, below, p. 517, .513, note.

Essay on Population, fifth edition, vol. I. p. 9.

Vol. I. p. 7.

History of the Earth and Animated Nature, Part II. Chap. II.

Essay on Population, vol. I. p. 9.

Moral and Political Philosophy, Book VI. Chap. xi.

Vol. II. p. 220.

Vol. III. p. 180.

This passage, which occurs in the Second Edition in quarto, p, 531, is not to be found in the Fifth Edition of the Essay. But I beg leave once for all to observe, that those sentences of our author, the sense of which he has never shewn the slightest inclination to retract, and the spirit of which on the contrary is of the essence of his system, I do not hold myself bound to pass over unnoticed, merely because he has afterwards expunged them, that he might not “inflict an unnecessary violence on the feelings of his renders [Quarterly Review for July 1817.],” or that he might “soften some of the harshest conclusions of the first Essay [Malthus, Preface to the Second Edition.].”

Vol. II. p. 245.

See further on this subject, Book II. Chapter II. note a.

Vol I. p. 7.

Vol. I. p. 255. et seqq.

Vol. II. p. 289.

Vol. I. p. 7.

Book I. and II.

Book III.

Book IV.

“The corporal forthwith began to run back in his mind, the principal events in the king of Bohemia's story, from every one of which it appeared that he was the most fortunate man that ever existed in the world.” Tristram Shandy, vol. VI.

Franklin, Works, 1806, vol. II. p. 385.

“If in Europe they have but four births to a marriage, we in America must reckon eight.”—Franklin, ubi supra.

P. 11.

Quarterly Review, No. XXXIV, p. 374.

Preface, Second Edition, p. vii; Fifth Edition, p. ix.

First Edition, p. 184 to 209; Fifth Edition, vol. II. p. 251 to 270.

Second Edition, p. 384. See this question more fully discussed in Book VI. of the present work.

Preface, p. ix.

Lettres Persanes, Lettre CVIII. The ideas delivered here are resumed, and made the subject of further discussion in L'Esprit des Loix, Livre XXIII. chap. xix. et seqq.

Book I. Chapter xii.

Vol. I. p. 292, 3.

P. 300.

Essay on the Populousness of Ancient Nations.

Barrow, Chap. IX.

P. 314, 15.

P. 293. This amount was regularly delivered in to Lord Macartney, in the form of an abstract of a census, taken in the preceding year, and digested under seventeen heads, for the different provinces of China within the Great Wall. ” We had always,” says Mr. Barrow, “found the officer who delivered it, a plain, unaffected, and honest man, who had on no occasion attempted to deceive or impose on us; and we could not consistently consider it in any other light than as: a document drawn up from authentic materials.”

It is necessary however to be observed in this place, that my argument does not in any degree depend on the question, whether this is the true rate of the population of China. If the real number of the inhabitants is one-third or one-half less than is here put down, we have only to reduce the following numbers accordingly; the proportions, every moral consideration, and every consideration drawn from credibility. will remain the same.

P. 316. It is not unworthy of notice that Mr. Ellis, the last traveller in China, who accompanied Lord Amherst in 1816, says, “Of that degree of distress which might drive parents to infanticide there was no appearance, nor did any fact of the description come to my knowledge.” He adds in a note, “It is by no means my intention to deny the existence of the practice, but to express some doubt of the asserted frequency.” Ellis, Chap. VII. The modesty of the note, in all reason, inforces the statement in the text. It shews that Mr. Ellis is not a man who has devoted himself to the support of a theory.

Among others, I would beg leave to name Mr. H. T. Colebroke, President of the Asiatic Society in London.

Asiatic Researches, vol. XII. No. xiii.

Vol. I. p. 277.

P. 278.

P. 269.

Lettres Persannes, Lettre 108: Montaigne, Liv. III. Chap. vi. It will of course be understood that I place no reliance on these numbers. It is contrary to every idea I entertain on the subject, to suppose that any thing can be precisely known respecting it, unless after a long and patient investigation, checking every preceding report by the reports which follow, and the deductions which such collation shall afford. I therefore merely take the figures above put down, as the representative of some very high, but uncertain number, and as standing for the testimony of all those who first visited America, of whatever class or denomination, however barbarous, or however humane, as to the extraordinary populousness of the countries they saw.

Las Casas, Destruycion de las Indias.

Ibid. Voltaire, Histoire Générale, Chap. 122.

Robertson, History of America, Book VII.

Raynal, Liv. VI.

De Solis, Book III, Chap. xvi.

Robertson, ubi supra.

Raynal, Liv. VII.

Robertson, ubi supra.

Destruycion de las Indias.

Pinkerton, in his Geography, proceeding upon the authority of Estalla, the writer of a book of fictitious travels, would have us believe that, “deficient as the native population of Peru is at present, it was still more thin before the Spanish conquest.” Modern Geography, third edition, Vol. II. p. 564.

Having referred to this geographer, I cannot dismiss the mention of him, without a 'passing observation upon the spirit in which his account of South America is written. He says [p. 304], “Certainly the Spaniards never sacrificed more victims than the Mexicans devoted to their Gods; and the clamours of pretended philosophy will often be found In opposition to the real cause of humanity which it aspires to defend. The cruelties of the Spaniards must by candour be partly imputed to the profusion of torture and human blood which every where met their eyes in this unhappy country; as such scenes change the very nature of man, and inflame him like the carnage of a field of battle.” To say nothing of the gross misrepresentation contained in these lines, will Mr. Pinkerton assert that “the cruelties of the Spaniards” were greater in Mexico, than among the innocent Peruvians, and the harmless Indians of Hispaniola?

A few pages after that in which he thus extenuates “the Spanish cruelties,” Mr. Pinkerton exclaims [p. 320] against the infamous practice of smoking:” affording us between the two an admirable example of his notions respecting the moral sense.

Book VIII.

Book VI.

Book VIII.

Esprit des Loix, Liv. XXIII. Chap. vii.

Book III.

Ibid.

Robertson, Book VIII.

Histoire Gènèrale, Chap. 122.

Book VIII.

Histoire des Deux Indes, Liν. VIII.

Vol. I, p. 87.

Plutarch, in Vita Lycurgi,

Voyage d'Anacharsis.

Life of Lycurgus: North's Translation.

Plutarch, ubi supra.

Ibid,

Lib V. caps 34.

Lib. VII, cap. 58.

Lib. 11, cap. 7.

Life of Lycurgus.

Livius, Lib. Ill, cap. 3.

Epitome LIX.

Dionysius, Antiquitates, Lit. IX, sub anno.

Tacitus Annales, Lib. II, cap. 51; Lib. XV, cap, 19. See further Lipsius, Excursus ad Taciti Annales, Lib. Ill, cap. 25.

Livius, Epitome LIX.

Suetonius,” Julius Cæsar, cap. 20.

Esprit des Loix, Liv. XXIII, Chap. xxi.

Suetonius, Augustus, Cap. 89.

Anlus Gellius, Lib. I. Cap, 6.

Dion Cassius, Lib. LVI.

vide apud Montesquieu, ubi supra.

Dionysius, [Editor: illegible word].

Vol. I. p. 333.

p. 334.

Vol. I. p. 484. There is an observation in Fuller, the celebrated historian of the Worthies of England, under the article, Huntingdonshire, much to the same purpose.

“I meet with this uncomfortable passage in Mr. Speed's description of this shire: That, as this city, so the old families here have been with time outworne, few only, of the many formerly, now remaining, whose sirnames before the reign of the last Henry were in this shire of any eminency.”.

Hill, Essays on Ancient Greece, Essay XIII.

Vol. I, p. 21.

Essay on Population, Vol. III, p. 175, et seqq.

Psalm VIII.

Psalm CXXXIX.

Lee, Junius Brutus.

Psalm CXXVII.

Psalm CXXVIII.

Proverbs, Chap. XVII.

Judges, Chap. XII.

Télémaque, Liv. XII.

No. 500.

Vol. I, p. 21.

Vol. I, p. 9.

P. 14

P. 13

P. 15

In the Introduction to Book I, I have said, “He neither proves, nor attempts to prove what he asserts.” And this is the accurate state of the case.

P 7.

P. 9

P. 3

Vol. II, p. 383.

Essay on Population, Vol. II, p. 194.

Vol. I, p. 7; Vol. II, p. 194.

Vol. II, p. 3. seventh edition.

Price's Observations, Vol. II, p. 49.

Essay on Population, Vol. I, p. 8.

Ibid. Mr. Malthus refers us for this statement to Sir W. Petty's Political Arithmetic, where it is not to be found. It occurs in his Essay concerning the Growth of the City of London.

I believe, Vol. II, p. 3, &c. of the Seventh Edition.

The knowledge of this fact of the average of four children to a marriage, seems to be one of the oldest positions in political economy. Derham, in his Physico-Theology, Book IV, Chap. X,. fifth edition, has constructed a Table for different parts of Europe, founded, as he tells us, on Major Graunt's Observations on the Bills of Motality, and Mr. King's Remarks on the First of Dr. Davenant's Essays, from which he draws the same conclusion: and on this he builds an inference, that the numbers of tile human species have been for the most part at a stand, ever since that miraculous longevity of man ceased, which, he says, “was of absolute necessity for the more speedy peopling of the new world.”

This Table is printed in the Essay on Population, Vol. II, p. 167.

Vol. I, p. 8.

Vol. III, p. 344, note.

Principles of Political Economy, p. 227. See below, p. 484.

See Mr. Booth's Dissertation on the Ratios of Increase, Inserted p. 243.

Observations on Reversionary Payments, Vol. I, p. 314.

See below, Book VI, Chapter 111, seqq.

See above pages 30, 31, 32.

Vol. III, p. 344, note.

Vol. II, p, 246.

See above, p. 36.

Of the Tables I have here inserted, the first four are to be found in the volume of the Swedish Memoirs for 1766, the fifth in the volume for 1809, and the 6th in the volume for 1776. The seventh is a Table of my own construction, founded generally on the enumerations I met wilh dispersed in different volumes of this work.

Essay on Population, Vol. I. p. 21.

It may be worth while to illustrate this proposition in figures. thus:

So that by this way of calculation Sweden contained, at the time of the destruction of the Western Empire m 476, little more than three hundred souls, and when this part of the globe began to send forth its hordes, which destroyed the power of the Romans, and changed the face of the world, it could scarcely boast a human inhabitant.

Page 3.

See below, Mr. Booth's Dissertation,

The proportion of one child born annually to five marriages, is recognized by Wargentin, Sussmilch, and Malthus. Sussmilch, vol. I. p. 231. Malthus, vol. I. p.413.

Table IV.

Vol. II. p. 410.

When I say general, I mean so far as the female is concerned. The following extract from Graunt's Observations on the Bills of Mortality, p. 65, is not unworthy of attention, as it may be applied to this part of the subject.

Cum, quantis ouibus feminis sufficiat unus aries, experientia compertum sit, agnorum masculorum qualis proportio castranda sit, discimus: ex. grat. si viginti feminis illum sufficere concederemus, tum, novsmdecim castrandi forent. Nam si octodecim tantum castrarentur, duorum cum singulis feminis copulatio promiscua (in quantum duorum masculorum admissio id facere possit) incrementum impediret, sed si nulli castrarentur, verisimile est quod singulo viginti arietum cum singulâ feminarum copulante, minima, forsitan nulla, conceptio efficiretur.

I have thought the above passage worthy to be inserted in this place, because the subject of which I am treating cannot be thoroughly understood, without thus recurring to first principles. Be it observed however, that the theory of Graunt will only apply to man in a state of nature. The case is exceedingly different in societies constituted after the manner of European nations; as will more fully appear in the next chapter.

It is however allowed to a person of the male sex to marry at eighteen, provided he has any landed property, holds any office, or has in any other way the visible source of a regular income. Handbok i Svenska Kyrkolag faranheten, or, Manual of the Swedish Ecclesiastical Law, Chap. i. § 5.

Handbok, ubi supra.

Table VI, p. 159.

Mr. Nairman:, one of the librarians to Sir Joseph Banks.

Page 172.

Vol. 1, p. 391.

See: above, p. 127.

Price's Observations, Vol. II, p. 460.

Ibid, p. 407, note.

Ibid, p. 251, 431.

Ibid, p. 404, 405.

See above, p. 154, 155, 156.

Observations on Reversionary Payments, vol. II. p. 296

P. 207.

Essay on Population, vol. II. p. 180.

p. 181.

p. 182.

p. 183.

p. 185.

Malthus, vol. I. p. 385.

P. 416.

Histoire Naturelle, Tome XL. p. 47.

Tome I. p. 130

Price ubi supra.

P. xxii.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Vol. II, p. 403.

P. xx.

For this Table see above, p, 203, 4.

The reverend Joseph Fawcet, the friend of my youth, my first companion of imaginative soul and luxuriant ideas, whose name it is gratifying to me to record, though on so trivial an occasion.

Essays, Part II, Essay xi.

Essay on Population, Vol. III, p. 343, 344, Note.

Vol. I. p. 5, 6.

Vol I. p. 9.

Witness the horrible famine in India in 1771.

“If want alone, or the desire of the labouring classes to possess the necessaries and conveniences of life, were a sufficient stimulus to production, there is no state in Europe or in the world that would have found any other practical limit to its wealth than its power to produce; and the earth would probably before this period have contained, at the very least, ten times as many inhabitants as are supported on its surface at present. But........where the right of private property is tablished, &c. &c. &c.”

See Malthus on Political Economy, as quoted in page 484.

See Wentworth's Account of that Colony.

See the remarks of Dr. Price in Appendix to Chapters IV, V, VI. p, 192, 193.

Vide page 268.

Is it necessary to observe, that I would apply this to Great Britain as it was previous to the last peace, and not to the years of extraordinary calamity that have followed?

Vol. II, p. 220

Vol. II, p. 260

This remark perhaps stands in need of explanation. I acknowledge a flux and reflux in the population of countries, as, for example, in Sweden. But I affirm that there is no instance of a country abundantly peopled, then reduced in its numbers through a scarcity of the means of subsistence, and afterwards from the depths of depopulation becoming populous again purely because the superabundance of its citizens was taken away.

Essay on Population, Vol. II, p. 220.

Vol. II, p. 220.

Vol. II, p.159.

See above, p. 31.

P.32.

In the United States a given number of children die, and yet the population is doubled every generation. If as many children in proportion are born in China or any other country where the population is at a stand, as in the United States, it is clear that not only that number of children must die, but another number in addition, equal to the number of children that die in the United States, added to the number of mature persons that might be found necessary barely to keep up the race. See above, p. 5O.

Perhaps we ought to except from this censure the Register of Sweden, where so much enlightened attention « seems to have been bestowed on all the questions connected with population.

See above, p. 226.

Essay on Population, First Edition, p. 177. Fifth Edition, Vol. II, p. 216.

Speech on the Debts of the Nabob of Arcot.

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chap. XXXIV.

Ibid. Chap. XXVI, note 99.

Agriolœ Vita, cap. 38.

Isaiah, Chap. XIII.

Essay on Population, Vol. I, p, 255 to 263.

I have been told by a Swede of good information that 90,000 persons perished in the disastrous campaign of 1809–10.

Stow, ad annum

A.D. 1455.

Ad annum.

Essay on Population, Vol. I, p, 21.

Vol. I, chap, ii, p. 44, 45.

See above, p. 147.

Robertson, History of America, Book X.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Hume, Chap. LII. Chalmers, Annals of the United Colonies, p. 160.

Robertson, ubi supra.

Robertson, ubi supra.

Chalmers, p. 207.

Chalmers, p. 208

Chalmers, p. 226.

Chalmers, p. 363.

P. 635.

P. 644.

Chalmers, p. 644.

Ibid.

Chalmers, p. 645.

Bristed, America and her Resources, Chapter VII.

Tales of my Landlord: First Series; Old Mortality.

Morse, American Geography.

Page 12. I will indulge myself in only one remark in this place. Mr. Pitkin states the population in 1749 as 1,046,000: Dr. Franklin, another of Mr. Malthus's authorities, in his celebrated paper to which I have so often had occasion to refer, says in 1731, “There are supposed to be now upwards of one million of English souls in North America.” The difference between Dr. Franklin's statement and Mr. Pitkin s is nothing. What authority there is for either I know not. Mr. Pitkin gives a specious appearance of accuracy to his, by putting down a precise number for each of the twelve colonies, seriatim. But he does not tell us from whence he drew his information.

Now, comparing these two estimates, it would follow that, for sixteen years, the population of North America experienced no increase. Nay if we hold the two authors to the words of their respective propositions, we might perhaps conjecture that the population had diminished. Dr. Franklin speaks of the number of “English souls;” while Mr. Pitkin expressly takes in the “whole white population.” What becomes then of Mr. Malthus's assertion, that “in the Northern States of America the population has been found to double itself, for above a century and a half successively, in less than twenty-five years?”

See above, p. 290

P. 293, 4.

It is not unworthy of remark, that the first idea of a doubling in perpetual series with short intervals, was started, when the number of new arrivals would have had nothing astounding in it. It was published by Dr. Franklin in 1731, and by Dr. Styles in 1761. A considerable part of the interval between these two passed, according to Mr. Pitkin, without any increase. See note a.

The following numbers are taken from the records at the Custom House, collated with the Returns annually laid on the Table of the House of Commons.

Westworth New South Wales, Preface.

New Brunswick.

Morse, Geography; Article, Pennsylvania; Section, Societies, Mellish, Travels, Chapter 24.

Vol II p 271, 3.

Vol. II, p. 151.

Vol. III p. 92

Vol. I, p. 184.

De Bello Gallico, Lib. VI, cap. 19.

Part I, chap. vii.

The proportion is exactly the same in the bill of mortality for the same place in 1809.

Ibid.

Chap. XII,

See above, p. 27 9, ct seqq.

Vol. II, p. 220,

It has already been mentioned that there are large forests within the boundaries of China. Book I, Chapter VI.

Emigration becomes a less pleasing object, in proportion as we are induced to doubt of the increase of the numbers of mankind; and however agreeable it may prove to the country (North America for example) by which the emigrants are received, it would be sedulously counteracted by all means of benevolent and parental treatment in the enlightened statesmen of the country from which they proceeded.

Vol II, p. 255, 6.

P. 220.

Vol. III, p. 103.

Great mistakes seem to have been made respecting the actual population of the earth, which it is perhaps worth while to mention. There is a spirit gone forth among mankind, whose favourite gratification it is to abolish the beautiful, and to paint all that is, or that has been, however in appearance prosperous or admirable, under humiliating colours. Pride has a gross and undistinguishing appetite, that feeds at one time upon honour, and at another upon disgrace. Impelled by this spirit, some writers have been disposed to set down the population of China at one hundred and fifty, instead of three hundred millions, as reported by Du Halde and Sir George Staunton. But they appear to have had little reason on their side. If the received account is accurate, the population of China amounts to 230 persons to a square mile. But the inhabitants of England rate at 200, the county of Lancaster at 476, and the district of Burdwan in Bengal at more than 600. [See above p. 54, 55.] A particular district however can never be taken for the standard of a country of large dimensions.

Vol. II, p. 269.

Vol. I, p. 14.

P. 13.

Observations on Reversionary Payments, Vol. I, p. 314.

Principles of Political Economy, p. 227.

Observations on Reversionary Payments, Vol. II, p. 138

idib

P. 148,149

P. 159,160.

Righy, Holkham and its Agriculture.

Rigby, Holkam and its Agriculture.

When I say no permanent tendency to increase, I speak from experience the genuineguide on this subject. Population has perhap increased for a time in Sweden; but it is not less probable, that Sweden is not more populous now, than it was five centuries, or ten centuries ago. Mr. Malthus may indulge in the dream of his ratios, and f in my hopes of gradual change and improvements in human society': but practical statesmen ought to be governed in the ordinary course of their measures, by what they find recorded in the pages of genuine history.

Vol. II. p. 271, 3.

Vol. III, p. 344, note,

Ibid.

Preface, p. ix.

lbid.

Quarto Edition, 1803, p. 383.

Vol. II, p. 271.

Vol. II, p. 271, 3.

Vol. III, p. 103.

Vol. I, p. 22, note.

“An original well-head of political truth.” “The great merit and the everlasting value of his work.” “The high moral and religious blessings which lie involved in this germ.” “But I must

beware how I yield to this captivating theme.” “It was natural indeed to think, that all truth would be harmonious and consistent, and that the universe was not constructed on a plan altogether preposterous. It is the high distinction of the Essay on Population to have demonstrated this.”

This author expresses his astonishment and horror, that in the year 1797, only one year before the first appearance of the Essay on Population, the immortal Pitt introduced a bill laid before parliament, with such words as, “that those who had enriched their country with children, might feel that they hail a claim on its support.”

See A Second Letter to the Right Honourable Robert Peele, M. P. for the University of Oxford, said to be written by the Rev. E. Coppleston, D. D, Provost of Oriel College in that University.

vol..I, p. 21.

Vol. III, p. 299.

See above, Book III, Chapter V.

P. 11.

Vol. II, p. 268, 256.

P, 25 1, 252.

P, 269,

Book I, chapter v, p. 73. Edition, 1797.

Vol. II, p. 245.

Vol. III, p. 806.

P. 299:

P.175.

Vol. II. p. 307.

Vol. III, p. 178.

Ibid.

Vol. III, p. 222.

Vol. III, p. 179.

P. 180.

P. 190.

Vol. II. p. 266.

Quarto Edition, 1803, p. 531.

Vol. III, p.179.

See above, Book I, Chap. X, and again, p. 101, 102, 103.

See above, p. 553.

Vol. Ill, p. 181.

To what department of didactic science his second law belongs, that the rich man “a right to do what he will with his own,” in another question.

Vol. III, p. 214.

P, 213, 214,

P.291.

Vol III, p. 50. 51.

P. SO1, note.

See above, Book III, Chapter V.

Samuel Horsley, Bishop of St. Asaph.

Essay on Population, Vol.III, p.180.

Vol. III, p. 180.

This is a mistake: I ought also to have excepted, “an act of private charity.”

I am thoroughly aware that Mr. Malthus has several neat and well turned periods in favour of charity, under certain strict limitations. All I mear. to say is, that they are diametrically in opposition to the cardinal principles of his work.

Vol. III, p. 199.

See above p. 101.

P 220.

Vol. Ill, p. 175.

P. 294, note.

P. 373.

P. 374.

Ibid.

P 154.

P 173.

Sallust, In Bello Cutilinario.

Vol. II. p. 324.

Vol. II, p. 307.

P. 325.

Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chap. VIII.

Ibid, Chap. VII.

P. 326.

P. 327.

Book I, Chapter VIII.

Vol. III. p. 181.

P. 30,31,32.