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An Essay on the Principle of Population

Thomas Malthus



1798





AN ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION, AS IT AFFECTS THE FUTURE
IMPROVEMENT OF SOCIETY WITH REMARKS ON THE SPECULATIONS OF MR. GODWIN,
M. CONDORCET, AND OTHER WRITERS.

LONDON, PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, IN ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD, 1798.




Preface


The following Essay owes its origin to a conversation with a friend, on
the subject of Mr Godwin's essay on avarice and profusion, in his
Enquirer. The discussion started the general question of the future
improvement of society, and the Author at first sat down with an
intention of merely stating his thoughts to his friend, upon paper, in
a clearer manner than he thought he could do in conversation. But as
the subject opened upon him, some ideas occurred, which he did not
recollect to have met with before; and as he conceived that every least
light, on a topic so generally interesting, might be received with
candour, he determined to put his thoughts in a form for publication.

The Essay might, undoubtedly, have been rendered much more complete by
a collection of a greater number of facts in elucidation of the general
argument. But a long and almost total interruption from very particular
business, joined to a desire (perhaps imprudent) of not delaying the
publication much beyond the time that he originally proposed, prevented
the Author from giving to the subject an undivided attention. He
presumes, however, that the facts which he has adduced will be found to
form no inconsiderable evidence for the truth of his opinion respecting
the future improvement of mankind. As the Author contemplates this
opinion at present, little more appears to him to be necessary than a
plain statement, in addition to the most cursory view of society, to
establish it.

It is an obvious truth, which has been taken notice of by many writers,
that population must always be kept down to the level of the means of
subsistence; but no writer that the Author recollects has inquired
particularly into the means by which this level is effected: and it is
a view of these means which forms, to his mind, the strongest obstacle
in the way to any very great future improvement of society. He hopes it
will appear that, in the discussion of this interesting subject, he is
actuated solely by a love of truth, and not by any prejudices against
any particular set of men, or of opinions. He professes to have read
some of the speculations on the future improvement of society in a
temper very different from a wish to find them visionary, but he has
not acquired that command over his understanding which would enable him
to believe what he wishes, without evidence, or to refuse his assent to
what might be unpleasing, when accompanied with evidence.

The view which he has given of human life has a melancholy hue, but he
feels conscious that he has drawn these dark tints from a conviction
that they are really in the picture, and not from a jaundiced eye or an
inherent spleen of disposition. The theory of mind which he has
sketched in the two last chapters accounts to his own understanding in
a satisfactory manner for the existence of most of the evils of life,
but whether it will have the same effect upon others must be left to
the judgement of his readers.

If he should succeed in drawing the attention of more able men to what
he conceives to be the principal difficulty in the way to the
improvement of society and should, in consequence, see this difficulty
removed, even in theory, he will gladly retract his present opinions
and rejoice in a conviction of his error.

                                     7 June 1798




CHAPTER 1

Question stated--Little prospect of a determination of it, from the
enmity of the opposing parties--The principal argument against the
perfectibility of man and of society has never been fairly
answered--Nature of the difficulty arising from population--Outline of
the principal argument of the Essay


The great and unlooked for discoveries that have taken place of late
years in natural philosophy, the increasing diffusion of general
knowledge from the extension of the art of printing, the ardent and
unshackled spirit of inquiry that prevails throughout the lettered and
even unlettered world, the new and extraordinary lights that have been
thrown on political subjects which dazzle and astonish the
understanding, and particularly that tremendous phenomenon in the
political horizon, the French Revolution, which, like a blazing comet,
seems destined either to inspire with fresh life and vigour, or to
scorch up and destroy the shrinking inhabitants of the earth, have all
concurred to lead many able men into the opinion that we were touching
on a period big with the most important changes, changes that would in
some measure be decisive of the future fate of mankind.

It has been said that the great question is now at issue, whether man
shall henceforth start forwards with accelerated velocity towards
illimitable, and hitherto unconceived improvement, or be condemned to a
perpetual oscillation between happiness and misery, and after every
effort remain still at an immeasurable distance from the wished-for
goal.

Yet, anxiously as every friend of mankind must look forwards to the
termination of this painful suspense, and eagerly as the inquiring mind
would hail every ray of light that might assist its view into futurity,
it is much to be lamented that the writers on each side of this
momentous question still keep far aloof from each other. Their mutual
arguments do not meet with a candid examination. The question is not
brought to rest on fewer points, and even in theory scarcely seems to
be approaching to a decision.

The advocate for the present order of things is apt to treat the sect
of speculative philosophers either as a set of artful and designing
knaves who preach up ardent benevolence and draw captivating pictures
of a happier state of society only the better to enable them to destroy
the present establishments and to forward their own deep-laid schemes
of ambition, or as wild and mad-headed enthusiasts whose silly
speculations and absurd paradoxes are not worthy the attention of any
reasonable man.

The advocate for the perfectibility of man, and of society, retorts on
the defender of establishments a more than equal contempt. He brands
him as the slave of the most miserable and narrow prejudices; or as the
defender of the abuses of civil society only because he profits by
them. He paints him either as a character who prostitutes his
understanding to his interest, or as one whose powers of mind are not
of a size to grasp any thing great and noble, who cannot see above five
yards before him, and who must therefore be utterly unable to take in
the views of the enlightened benefactor of mankind.

In this unamicable contest the cause of truth cannot but suffer. The
really good arguments on each side of the question are not allowed to
have their proper weight. Each pursues his own theory, little
solicitous to correct or improve it by an attention to what is advanced
by his opponents.

The friend of the present order of things condemns all political
speculations in the gross. He will not even condescend to examine the
grounds from which the perfectibility of society is inferred. Much less
will he give himself the trouble in a fair and candid manner to attempt
an exposition of their fallacy.

The speculative philosopher equally offends against the cause of truth.
With eyes fixed on a happier state of society, the blessings of which
he paints in the most captivating colours, he allows himself to indulge
in the most bitter invectives against every present establishment,
without applying his talents to consider the best and safest means of
removing abuses and without seeming to be aware of the tremendous
obstacles that threaten, even in theory, to oppose the progress of man
towards perfection.

It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will
always be confirmed by experiment. Yet so much friction, and so many
minute circumstances occur in practice, which it is next to impossible
for the most enlarged and penetrating mind to foresee, that on few
subjects can any theory be pronounced just, till all the arguments
against it have been maturely weighed and clearly and consistently
refuted.

I have read some of the speculations on the perfectibility of man and
of society with great pleasure. I have been warmed and delighted with
the enchanting picture which they hold forth. I ardently wish for such
happy improvements. But I see great, and, to my understanding,
unconquerable difficulties in the way to them. These difficulties it is
my present purpose to state, declaring, at the same time, that so far
from exulting in them, as a cause of triumph over the friends of
innovation, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see them
completely removed.

The most important argument that I shall adduce is certainly not new.
The principles on which it depends have been explained in part by Hume,
and more at large by Dr Adam Smith. It has been advanced and applied to
the present subject, though not with its proper weight, or in the most
forcible point of view, by Mr Wallace, and it may probably have been
stated by many writers that I have never met with. I should certainly
therefore not think of advancing it again, though I mean to place it in
a point of view in some degree different from any that I have hitherto
seen, if it had ever been fairly and satisfactorily answered.

The cause of this neglect on the part of the advocates for the
perfectibility of mankind is not easily accounted for. I cannot doubt
the talents of such men as Godwin and Condorcet. I am unwilling to
doubt their candour. To my understanding, and probably to that of most
others, the difficulty appears insurmountable. Yet these men of
acknowledged ability and penetration scarcely deign to notice it, and
hold on their course in such speculations with unabated ardour and
undiminished confidence. I have certainly no right to say that they
purposely shut their eyes to such arguments. I ought rather to doubt
the validity of them, when neglected by such men, however forcibly
their truth may strike my own mind. Yet in this respect it must be
acknowledged that we are all of us too prone to err. If I saw a glass
of wine repeatedly presented to a man, and he took no notice of it, I
should be apt to think that he was blind or uncivil. A juster
philosophy might teach me rather to think that my eyes deceived me and
that the offer was not really what I conceived it to be.

In entering upon the argument I must premise that I put out of the
question, at present, all mere conjectures, that is, all suppositions,
the probable realization of which cannot be inferred upon any just
philosophical grounds. A writer may tell me that he thinks man will
ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him. But
before he can expect to bring any reasonable person over to his
opinion, he ought to shew that the necks of mankind have been gradually
elongating, that the lips have grown harder and more prominent, that
the legs and feet are daily altering their shape, and that the hair is
beginning to change into stubs of feathers. And till the probability of
so wonderful a conversion can be shewn, it is surely lost time and lost
eloquence to expatiate on the happiness of man in such a state; to
describe his powers, both of running and flying, to paint him in a
condition where all narrow luxuries would be contemned, where he would
be employed only in collecting the necessaries of life, and where,
consequently, each man's share of labour would be light, and his
portion of leisure ample.

I think I may fairly make two postulata.

First, That food is necessary to the existence of man.

Secondly, That the passion between the sexes is necessary and will
remain nearly in its present state.

These two laws, ever since we have had any knowledge of mankind, appear
to have been fixed laws of our nature, and, as we have not hitherto
seen any alteration in them, we have no right to conclude that they
will ever cease to be what they now are, without an immediate act of
power in that Being who first arranged the system of the universe, and
for the advantage of his creatures, still executes, according to fixed
laws, all its various operations.

I do not know that any writer has supposed that on this earth man will
ultimately be able to live without food. But Mr Godwin has conjectured
that the passion between the sexes may in time be extinguished. As,
however, he calls this part of his work a deviation into the land of
conjecture, I will not dwell longer upon it at present than to say that
the best arguments for the perfectibility of man are drawn from a
contemplation of the great progress that he has already made from the
savage state and the difficulty of saying where he is to stop. But
towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes, no progress
whatever has hitherto been made. It appears to exist in as much force
at present as it did two thousand or four thousand years ago. There are
individual exceptions now as there always have been. But, as these
exceptions do not appear to increase in number, it would surely be a
very unphilosophical mode of arguing to infer, merely from the
existence of an exception, that the exception would, in time, become
the rule, and the rule the exception.

Assuming then my postulata as granted, I say, that the power of
population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to
produce subsistence for man.

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.
Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight
acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in
comparison of the second.

By that law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of
man, the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal.

This implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from
the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall somewhere and
must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind.

Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, nature has scattered the
seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand. She has
been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to
rear them. The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with
ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds
in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious all
pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds.
The race of plants and the race of animals shrink under this great
restrictive law. And the race of man cannot, by any efforts of reason,
escape from it. Among plants and animals its effects are waste of seed,
sickness, and premature death. Among mankind, misery and vice. The
former, misery, is an absolutely necessary consequence of it. Vice is a
highly probable consequence, and we therefore see it abundantly
prevail, but it ought not, perhaps, to be called an absolutely
necessary consequence. The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation
to evil.

This natural inequality of the two powers of population and of
production in the earth, and that great law of our nature which must
constantly keep their effects equal, form the great difficulty that to
me appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society.
All other arguments are of slight and subordinate consideration in
comparison of this. I see no way by which man can escape from the
weight of this law which pervades all animated nature. No fancied
equality, no agrarian regulations in their utmost extent, could remove
the pressure of it even for a single century. And it appears,
therefore, to be decisive against the possible existence of a society,
all the members of which should live in ease, happiness, and
comparative leisure; and feel no anxiety about providing the means of
subsistence for themselves and families.

Consequently, if the premises are just, the argument is conclusive
against the perfectibility of the mass of mankind.

I have thus sketched the general outline of the argument, but I will
examine it more particularly, and I think it will be found that
experience, the true source and foundation of all knowledge, invariably
confirms its truth.




CHAPTER 2

The different ratio in which population and food increase--The
necessary effects of these different ratios of increase--Oscillation
produced by them in the condition of the lower classes of
society--Reasons why this oscillation has not been so much observed as
might be expected--Three propositions on which the general argument of
the Essay depends--The different states in which mankind have been
known to exist proposed to be examined with reference to these three
propositions.


I said that population, when unchecked, increased in a geometrical
ratio, and subsistence for man in an arithmetical ratio.

Let us examine whether this position be just. I think it will be
allowed, that no state has hitherto existed (at least that we have any
account of) where the manners were so pure and simple, and the means of
subsistence so abundant, that no check whatever has existed to early
marriages, among the lower classes, from a fear of not providing well
for their families, or among the higher classes, from a fear of
lowering their condition in life. Consequently in no state that we have
yet known has the power of population been left to exert itself with
perfect freedom.

Whether the law of marriage be instituted or not, the dictate of nature
and virtue seems to be an early attachment to one woman. Supposing a
liberty of changing in the case of an unfortunate choice, this liberty
would not affect population till it arose to a height greatly vicious;
and we are now supposing the existence of a society where vice is
scarcely known.

In a state therefore of great equality and virtue, where pure and
simple manners prevailed, and where the means of subsistence were so
abundant that no part of the society could have any fears about
providing amply for a family, the power of population being left to
exert itself unchecked, the increase of the human species would
evidently be much greater than any increase that has been hitherto
known.

In the United States of America, where the means of subsistence have
been more ample, the manners of the people more pure, and consequently
the checks to early marriages fewer, than in any of the modern states
of Europe, the population has been found to double itself in
twenty-five years.

This ratio of increase, though short of the utmost power of population,
yet as the result of actual experience, we will take as our rule, and
say, that population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every
twenty-five years or increases in a geometrical ratio.

Let us now take any spot of earth, this Island for instance, and see in
what ratio the subsistence it affords can be supposed to increase. We
will begin with it under its present state of cultivation.

If I allow that by the best possible policy, by breaking up more land
and by great encouragements to agriculture, the produce of this Island
may be doubled in the first twenty-five years, I think it will be
allowing as much as any person can well demand.

In the next twenty-five years, it is impossible to suppose that the
produce could be quadrupled. It would be contrary to all our knowledge
of the qualities of land. The very utmost that we can conceive, is,
that the increase in the second twenty-five years might equal the
present produce. Let us then take this for our rule, though certainly
far beyond the truth, and allow that, by great exertion, the whole
produce of the Island might be increased every twenty-five years, by a
quantity of subsistence equal to what it at present produces. The most
enthusiastic speculator cannot suppose a greater increase than this. In
a few centuries it would make every acre of land in the Island like a
garden.

Yet this ratio of increase is evidently arithmetical.

It may be fairly said, therefore, that the means of subsistence
increase in an arithmetical ratio. Let us now bring the effects of
these two ratios together.

The population of the Island is computed to be about seven millions,
and we will suppose the present produce equal to the support of such a
number. In the first twenty-five years the population would be fourteen
millions, and the food being also doubled, the means of subsistence
would be equal to this increase. In the next twenty-five years the
population would be twenty-eight millions, and the means of subsistence
only equal to the support of twenty-one millions. In the next period,
the population would be fifty-six millions, and the means of
subsistence just sufficient for half that number. And at the conclusion
of the first century the population would be one hundred and twelve
millions and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of
thirty-five millions, which would leave a population of seventy-seven
millions totally unprovided for.

A great emigration necessarily implies unhappiness of some kind or
other in the country that is deserted. For few persons will leave their
families, connections, friends, and native land, to seek a settlement
in untried foreign climes, without some strong subsisting causes of
uneasiness where they are, or the hope of some great advantages in the
place to which they are going.

But to make the argument more general and less interrupted by the
partial views of emigration, let us take the whole earth, instead of
one spot, and suppose that the restraints to population were
universally removed. If the subsistence for man that the earth affords
was to be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what
the whole world at present produces, this would allow the power of
production in the earth to be absolutely unlimited, and its ratio of
increase much greater than we can conceive that any possible exertions
of mankind could make it.

Taking the population of the world at any number, a thousand millions,
for instance, the human species would increase in the ratio of--1, 2,
4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, etc. and subsistence as--1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc. In two centuries and a quarter, the population
would be to the means of subsistence as 512 to 10: in three centuries
as 4096 to 13, and in two thousand years the difference would be almost
incalculable, though the produce in that time would have increased to
an immense extent.

No limits whatever are placed to the productions of the earth; they may
increase for ever and be greater than any assignable quantity, yet
still the power of population being a power of a superior order, the
increase of the human species can only be kept commensurate to the
increase of the means of subsistence by the constant operation of the
strong law of necessity acting as a check upon the greater power.

The effects of this check remain now to be considered.

Among plants and animals the view of the subject is simple. They are
all impelled by a powerful instinct to the increase of their species,
and this instinct is interrupted by no reasoning or doubts about
providing for their offspring. Wherever therefore there is liberty, the
power of increase is exerted, and the superabundant effects are
repressed afterwards by want of room and nourishment, which is common
to animals and plants, and among animals by becoming the prey of others.

The effects of this check on man are more complicated. Impelled to the
increase of his species by an equally powerful instinct, reason
interrupts his career and asks him whether he may not bring beings into
the world for whom he cannot provide the means of subsistence. In a
state of equality, this would be the simple question. In the present
state of society, other considerations occur. Will he not lower his
rank in life? Will he not subject himself to greater difficulties than
he at present feels? Will he not be obliged to labour harder? and if he
has a large family, will his utmost exertions enable him to support
them? May he not see his offspring in rags and misery, and clamouring
for bread that he cannot give them? And may he not be reduced to the
grating necessity of forfeiting his independence, and of being obliged
to the sparing hand of charity for support?

These considerations are calculated to prevent, and certainly do
prevent, a very great number in all civilized nations from pursuing the
dictate of nature in an early attachment to one woman. And this
restraint almost necessarily, though not absolutely so, produces vice.
Yet in all societies, even those that are most vicious, the tendency to
a virtuous attachment is so strong that there is a constant effort
towards an increase of population. This constant effort as constantly
tends to subject the lower classes of the society to distress and to
prevent any great permanent amelioration of their condition.

The way in which, these effects are produced seems to be this. We will
suppose the means of subsistence in any country just equal to the easy
support of its inhabitants. The constant effort towards population,
which is found to act even in the most vicious societies, increases the
number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. The
food therefore which before supported seven millions must now be
divided among seven millions and a half or eight millions. The poor
consequently must live much worse, and many of them be reduced to
severe distress. The number of labourers also being above the
proportion of the work in the market, the price of labour must tend
toward a decrease, while the price of provisions would at the same time
tend to rise. The labourer therefore must work harder to earn the same
as he did before. During this season of distress, the discouragements
to marriage, and the difficulty of rearing a family are so great that
population is at a stand. In the mean time the cheapness of labour, the
plenty of labourers, and the necessity of an increased industry amongst
them, encourage cultivators to employ more labour upon their land, to
turn up fresh soil, and to manure and improve more completely what is
already in tillage, till ultimately the means of subsistence become in
the same proportion to the population as at the period from which we
set out. The situation of the labourer being then again tolerably
comfortable, the restraints to population are in some degree loosened,
and the same retrograde and progressive movements with respect to
happiness are repeated.

This sort of oscillation will not be remarked by superficial observers,
and it may be difficult even for the most penetrating mind to calculate
its periods. Yet that in all old states some such vibration does exist,
though from various transverse causes, in a much less marked, and in a
much more irregular manner than I have described it, no reflecting man
who considers the subject deeply can well doubt.

Many reasons occur why this oscillation has been less obvious, and less
decidedly confirmed by experience, than might naturally be expected.

One principal reason is that the histories of mankind that we possess
are histories only of the higher classes. We have but few accounts that
can be depended upon of the manners and customs of that part of mankind
where these retrograde and progressive movements chiefly take place. A
satisfactory history of this kind, on one people, and of one period,
would require the constant and minute attention of an observing mind
during a long life. Some of the objects of inquiry would be, in what
proportion to the number of adults was the number of marriages, to what
extent vicious customs prevailed in consequence of the restraints upon
matrimony, what was the comparative mortality among the children of the
most distressed part of the community and those who lived rather more
at their ease, what were the variations in the real price of labour,
and what were the observable differences in the state of the lower
classes of society with respect to ease and happiness, at different
times during a certain period.

Such a history would tend greatly to elucidate the manner in which the
constant check upon population acts and would probably prove the
existence of the retrograde and progressive movements that have been
mentioned, though the times of their vibrations must necessarily be
rendered irregular from the operation of many interrupting causes, such
as the introduction or failure of certain manufactures, a greater or
less prevalent spirit of agricultural enterprise, years of plenty, or
years of scarcity, wars and pestilence, poor laws, the invention of
processes for shortening labour without the proportional extension of
the market for the commodity, and, particularly, the difference between
the nominal and real price of labour, a circumstance which has perhaps
more than any other contributed to conceal this oscillation from common
view.

It very rarely happens that the nominal price of labour universally
falls, but we well know that it frequently remains the same, while the
nominal price of provisions has been gradually increasing. This is, in
effect, a real fall in the price of labour, and during this period the
condition of the lower orders of the community must gradually grow
worse and worse. But the farmers and capitalists are growing rich from
the real cheapness of labour. Their increased capitals enable them to
employ a greater number of men. Work therefore may be plentiful, and
the price of labour would consequently rise. But the want of freedom in
the market of labour, which occurs more or less in all communities,
either from parish laws, or the more general cause of the facility of
combination among the rich, and its difficulty among the poor, operates
to prevent the price of labour from rising at the natural period, and
keeps it down some time longer; perhaps till a year of scarcity, when
the clamour is too loud and the necessity too apparent to be resisted.

The true cause of the advance in the price of labour is thus concealed,
and the rich affect to grant it as an act of compassion and favour to
the poor, in consideration of a year of scarcity, and, when plenty
returns, indulge themselves in the most unreasonable of all complaints,
that the price does not again fall, when a little rejection would shew
them that it must have risen long before but from an unjust conspiracy
of their own.

But though the rich by unfair combinations contribute frequently to
prolong a season of distress among the poor, yet no possible form of
society could prevent the almost constant action of misery upon a great
part of mankind, if in a state of inequality, and upon all, if all were
equal.

The theory on which the truth of this position depends appears to me so
extremely clear that I feel at a loss to conjecture what part of it can
be denied.

That population cannot increase without the means of subsistence is a
proposition so evident that it needs no illustration.

That population does invariably increase where there are the means of
subsistence, the history of every people that have ever existed will
abundantly prove.

And that the superior power of population cannot be checked without
producing misery or vice, the ample portion of these too bitter
ingredients in the cup of human life and the continuance of the
physical causes that seem to have produced them bear too convincing a
testimony.

But, in order more fully to ascertain the validity of these three
propositions, let us examine the different states in which mankind have
been known to exist. Even a cursory review will, I think, be sufficient
to convince us that these propositions are incontrovertible truths.




CHAPTER 3

The savage or hunter state shortly reviewed--The shepherd state, or the
tribes of barbarians that overran the Roman Empire--The superiority of
the power of population to the means of subsistence--the cause of the
great tide of Northern Emigration.


In the rudest state of mankind, in which hunting is the principal
occupation, and the only mode of acquiring food; the means of
subsistence being scattered over a large extent of territory, the
comparative population must necessarily be thin. It is said that the
passion between the sexes is less ardent among the North American
Indians, than among any other race of men. Yet, notwithstanding this
apathy, the effort towards population, even in this people, seems to be
always greater than the means to support it. This appears, from the
comparatively rapid population that takes place, whenever any of the
tribes happen to settle in some fertile spot, and to draw nourishment
from more fruitful sources than that of hunting; and it has been
frequently remarked that when an Indian family has taken up its abode
near any European settlement, and adopted a more easy and civilized
mode of life, that one woman has reared five, or six, or more children;
though in the savage state it rarely happens that above one or two in a
family grow up to maturity. The same observation has been made with
regard to the Hottentots near the Cape. These facts prove the superior
power of population to the means of subsistence in nations of hunters,
and that this power always shews itself the moment it is left to act
with freedom.

It remains to inquire whether this power can be checked, and its
effects kept equal to the means of subsistence, without vice or misery.

The North American Indians, considered as a people, cannot justly be
called free and equal. In all the accounts we have of them, and,
indeed, of most other savage nations, the women are represented as much
more completely in a state of slavery to the men than the poor are to
the rich in civilized countries. One half the nation appears to act as
Helots to the other half, and the misery that checks population falls
chiefly, as it always must do, upon that part whose condition is lowest
in the scale of society. The infancy of man in the simplest state
requires considerable attention, but this necessary attention the women
cannot give, condemned as they are to the inconveniences and hardships
of frequent change of place and to the constant and unremitting
drudgery of preparing every thing for the reception of their tyrannic
lords. These exertions, sometimes during pregnancy or with children at
their backs, must occasion frequent miscarriages, and prevent any but
the most robust infants from growing to maturity. Add to these
hardships of the women the constant war that prevails among savages,
and the necessity which they frequently labour under of exposing their
aged and helpless parents, and of thus violating the first feelings of
nature, and the picture will not appear very free from the blot of
misery. In estimating the happiness of a savage nation, we must not fix
our eyes only on the warrior in the prime of life: he is one of a
hundred: he is the gentleman, the man of fortune, the chances have been
in his favour and many efforts have failed ere this fortunate being was
produced, whose guardian genius should preserve him through the
numberless dangers with which he would be surrounded from infancy to
manhood. The true points of comparison between two nations seem to be
the ranks in each which appear nearest to answer to each other. And in
this view, I should compare the warriors in the prime of life with the
gentlemen, and the women, children, and aged, with the lower classes of
the community in civilized states.

May we not then fairly infer from this short review, or rather, from
the accounts that may be referred to of nations of hunters, that their
population is thin from the scarcity of food, that it would immediately
increase if food was in greater plenty, and that, putting vice out of
the question among savages, misery is the check that represses the
superior power of population and keeps its effects equal to the means
of subsistence. Actual observation and experience tell us that this
check, with a few local and temporary exceptions, is constantly acting
now upon all savage nations, and the theory indicates that it probably
acted with nearly equal strength a thousand years ago, and it may not
be much greater a thousand years hence.

Of the manners and habits that prevail among nations of shepherds, the
next state of mankind, we are even more ignorant than of the savage
state. But that these nations could not escape the general lot of
misery arising from the want of subsistence, Europe, and all the
fairest countries in the world, bear ample testimony. Want was the goad
that drove the Scythian shepherds from their native haunts, like so
many famished wolves in search of prey. Set in motion by this all
powerful cause, clouds of Barbarians seemed to collect from all points
of the northern hemisphere. Gathering fresh darkness and terror as they
rolled on, the congregated bodies at length obscured the sun of Italy
and sunk the whole world in universal night. These tremendous effects,
so long and so deeply felt throughout the fairest portions of the
earth, may be traced to the simple cause of the superior power of
population to the means of subsistence.

It is well known that a country in pasture cannot support so many
inhabitants as a country in tillage, but what renders nations of
shepherds so formidable is the power which they possess of moving all
together and the necessity they frequently feel of exerting this power
in search of fresh pasture for their herds. A tribe that was rich in
cattle had an immediate plenty of food. Even the parent stock might be
devoured in a case of absolute necessity. The women lived in greater
ease than among nations of hunters. The men bold in their united
strength and confiding in their power of procuring pasture for their
cattle by change of place, felt, probably, but few fears about
providing for a family. These combined causes soon produced their
natural and invariable effect, an extended population. A more frequent
and rapid change of place became then necessary. A wider and more
extensive territory was successively occupied. A broader desolation
extended all around them. Want pinched the less fortunate members of
the society, and, at length, the impossibility of supporting such a
number together became too evident to be resisted. Young scions were
then pushed out from the parent-stock and instructed to explore fresh
regions and to gain happier seats for themselves by their swords. 'The
world was all before them where to choose.' Restless from present
distress, flushed with the hope of fairer prospects, and animated with
the spirit of hardy enterprise, these daring adventurers were likely to
become formidable adversaries to all who opposed them. The peaceful
inhabitants of the countries on which they rushed could not long
withstand the energy of men acting under such powerful motives of
exertion. And when they fell in with any tribes like their own, the
contest was a struggle for existence, and they fought with a desperate
courage, inspired by the rejection that death was the punishment of
defeat and life the prize of victory.

In these savage contests many tribes must have been utterly
exterminated. Some, probably, perished by hardship and famine. Others,
whose leading star had given them a happier direction, became great and
powerful tribes, and, in their turns, sent off fresh adventurers in
search of still more fertile seats. The prodigious waste of human life
occasioned by this perpetual struggle for room and food was more than
supplied by the mighty power of population, acting, in some degree,
unshackled from the consent habit of emigration. The tribes that
migrated towards the South, though they won these more fruitful regions
by continual battles, rapidly increased in number and power, from the
increased means of subsistence. Till at length the whole territory,
from the confines of China to the shores of the Baltic, was peopled by
a various race of Barbarians, brave, robust, and enterprising, inured
to hardship, and delighting in war. Some tribes maintained their
independence. Others ranged themselves under the standard of some
barbaric chieftain who led them to victory after victory, and what was
of more importance, to regions abounding in corn, wine, and oil, the
long wished for consummation, and great reward of their labours. An
Alaric, an Attila, or a Zingis Khan, and the chiefs around them, might
fight for glory, for the fame of extensive conquests, but the true
cause that set in motion the great tide of northern emigration, and
that continued to propel it till it rolled at different periods against
China, Persia, Italy, and even Egypt, was a scarcity of food, a
population extended beyond the means of supporting it.

The absolute population at any one period, in proportion to the extent
of territory, could never be great, on account of the unproductive
nature of some of the regions occupied; but there appears to have been
a most rapid succession of human beings, and as fast as some were mowed
down by the scythe of war or of famine, others rose in increased
numbers to supply their place. Among these bold and improvident
Barbarians, population was probably but little checked, as in modern
states, from a fear of future difficulties. A prevailing hope of
bettering their condition by change of place, a constant expectation of
plunder, a power even, if distressed, of selling their children as
slaves, added to the natural carelessness of the barbaric character,
all conspired to raise a population which remained to be repressed
afterwards by famine or war.

Where there is any inequality of conditions, and among nations of
shepherds this soon takes place, the distress arising from a scarcity
of provisions must fall hardest upon the least fortunate members of the
society. This distress also must frequently have been felt by the
women, exposed to casual plunder in the absence of their husbands, and
subject to continual disappointments in their expected return.

But without knowing enough of the minute and intimate history of these
people, to point out precisely on what part the distress for want of
food chiefly fell, and to what extent it was generally felt, I think we
may fairly say, from all the accounts that we have of nations of
shepherds, that population invariably increased among them whenever, by
emigration or any other cause, the means of subsistence were increased,
and that a further population was checked, and the actual population
kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice.

For, independently of any vicious customs that might have prevailed
amongst them with regard to women, which always operate as checks to
population, it must be acknowledged, I think, that the commission of
war is vice, and the effect of it misery, and none can doubt the misery
of want of food.




CHAPTER 4

State of civilized nations--Probability that Europe is much more
populous now than in the time of Julius Caesar--Best criterion of
population--Probable error of Hume in one the criterions that he
proposes as assisting in an estimate of population--Slow increase of
population at present in most of the states of Europe--The two
principal checks to population--The first, or preventive check examined
with regard to England.


In examining the next state of mankind with relation to the question
before us, the state of mixed pasture and tillage, in which with some
variation in the proportions the most civilized nations must always
remain, we shall be assisted in our review by what we daily see around
us, by actual experience, by facts that come within the scope of every
man's observation.

Notwithstanding the exaggerations of some old historians, there can
remain no doubt in the mind of any thinking man that the population of
the principal countries of Europe, France, England, Germany, Russia,
Poland, Sweden, and Denmark is much greater than ever it was in former
times. The obvious reason of these exaggerations is the formidable
aspect that even a thinly peopled nation must have, when collected
together and moving all at once in search of fresh seats. If to this
tremendous appearance be added a succession at certain intervals of
similar emigrations, we shall not be much surprised that the fears of
the timid nations of the South represented the North as a region
absolutely swarming with human beings. A nearer and juster view of the
subject at present enables us to see that the inference was as absurd
as if a man in this country, who was continually meeting on the road
droves of cattle from Wales and the North, was immediately to conclude
that these countries were the most productive of all the parts of the
kingdom.

The reason that the greater part of Europe is more populous now than it
was in former times, is that the industry of the inhabitants has made
these countries produce a greater quantity of human subsistence. For I
conceive that it may be laid down as a position not to be controverted,
that, taking a sufficient extent of territory to include within it
exportation and importation, and allowing some variation for the
prevalence of luxury, or of frugal habits, that population constantly
bears a regular proportion to the food that the earth is made to
produce. In the controversy concerning the populousness of ancient and
modern nations, could it be clearly ascertained that the average
produce of the countries in question, taken altogether, is greater now
than it was in the times of Julius Caesar, the dispute would be at once
determined.

When we are assured that China is the most fertile country in the
world, that almost all the land is in tillage, and that a great part of
it bears two crops every year, and further, that the people live very
frugally, we may infer with certainty that the population must be
immense, without busying ourselves in inquiries into the manners and
habits of the lower classes and the encouragements to early marriages.
But these inquiries are of the utmost importance, and a minute history
of the customs of the lower Chinese would be of the greatest use in
ascertaining in what manner the checks to a further population operate;
what are the vices, and what are the distresses that prevent an
increase of numbers beyond the ability of the country to support.

Hume, in his essay on the populousness of ancient and modern nations,
when he intermingles, as he says, an inquiry concerning causes with
that concerning facts, does not seem to see with his usual penetration
how very little some of the causes he alludes to could enable him to
form any judgement of the actual population of ancient nations. If any
inference can be drawn from them, perhaps it should be directly the
reverse of what Hume draws, though I certainly ought to speak with
great diffidence in dissenting from a man who of all others on such
subjects was the least likely to be deceived by first appearances. If I
find that at a certain period in ancient history, the encouragements to
have a family were great, that early marriages were consequently very
prevalent, and that few persons remained single, I should infer with
certainty that population was rapidly increasing, but by no means that
it was then actually very great, rather; indeed, the contrary, that it
was then thin and that there was room and food for a much greater
number. On the other hand, if I find that at this period the
difficulties attending a family were very great, that, consequently,
few early marriages took place, and that a great number of both sexes
remained single, I infer with certainty that population was at a stand,
and, probably, because the actual population was very great in
proportion to the fertility of the land and that there was scarcely
room and food for more. The number of footmen, housemaids, and other
persons remaining unmarried in modern states, Hume allows to be rather
an argument against their population. I should rather draw a contrary
inference and consider it an argument of their fullness, though this
inference is not certain, because there are many thinly inhabited
states that are yet stationary in their population. To speak,
therefore, correctly, perhaps it may be said that the number of
unmarried persons in proportion to the whole number, existing at
different periods, in the same or different states will enable us to
judge whether population at these periods was increasing, stationary,
or decreasing, but will form no criterion by which we can determine the
actual population.

There is, however, a circumstance taken notice of in most of the
accounts we have of China that it seems difficult to reconcile with
this reasoning. It is said that early marriages very generally prevail
through all the ranks of the Chinese. Yet Dr Adam Smith supposes that
population in China is stationary. These two circumstances appear to be
irreconcilable. It certainly seems very little probable that the
population of China is fast increasing. Every acre of land has been so
long in cultivation that we can hardly conceive there is any great
yearly addition to the average produce. The fact, perhaps, of the
universality of early marriages may not be sufficiently ascertained. If
it be supposed true, the only way of accounting for the difficulty,
with our present knowledge of the subject, appears to be that the
redundant population, necessarily occasioned by the prevalence of early
marriages, must be repressed by occasional famines, and by the custom
of exposing children, which, in times of distress, is probably more
frequent than is ever acknowledged to Europeans. Relative to this
barbarous practice, it is difficult to avoid remarking, that there
cannot be a stronger proof of the distresses that have been felt by
mankind for want of food, than the existence of a custom that thus
violates the most natural principle of the human heart. It appears to
have been very general among ancient nations, and certainly tended
rather to increase population.

In examining the principal states of modern Europe, we shall find that
though they have increased very considerably in population since they
were nations of shepherds, yet that at present their progress is but
slow, and instead of doubling their numbers every twenty-five years
they require three or four hundred years, or more, for that purpose.
Some, indeed, may be absolutely stationary, and others even retrograde.
The cause of this slow progress in population cannot be traced to a
decay of the passion between the sexes. We have sufficient reason to
think that this natural propensity exists still in undiminished vigour.
Why then do not its effects appear in a rapid increase of the human
species? An intimate view of the state of society in any one country in
Europe, which may serve equally for all, will enable us to answer this
question, and to say that a foresight of the difficulties attending the
rearing of a family acts as a preventive check, and the actual
distresses of some of the lower classes, by which they are disabled
from giving the proper food and attention to their children, act as a
positive check to the natural increase of population.

England, as one of the most flourishing states of Europe, may be fairly
taken for an example, and the observations made will apply with but
little variation to any other country where the population increases
slowly.

The preventive check appears to operate in some degree through all the
ranks of society in England. There are some men, even in the highest
rank, who are prevented from marrying by the idea of the expenses that
they must retrench, and the fancied pleasures that they must deprive
themselves of, on the supposition of having a family. These
considerations are certainly trivial, but a preventive foresight of
this kind has objects of much greater weight for its contemplation as
we go lower.

A man of liberal education, but with an income only just sufficient to
enable him to associate in the rank of gentlemen, must feel absolutely
certain that if he marries and has a family he shall be obliged, if he
mixes at all in society, to rank himself with moderate farmers and the
lower class of tradesmen. The woman that a man of education would
naturally make the object of his choice would be one brought up in the
same tastes and sentiments with himself and used to the familiar
intercourse of a society totally different from that to which she must
be reduced by marriage. Can a man consent to place the object of his
affection in a situation so discordant, probably, to her tastes and
inclinations? Two or three steps of descent in society, particularly at
this round of the ladder, where education ends and ignorance begins,
will not be considered by the generality of people as a fancied and
chimerical, but a real and essential evil. If society be held
desirable, it surely must be free, equal, and reciprocal society, where
benefits are conferred as well as received, and not such as the
dependent finds with his patron or the poor with the rich.

These considerations undoubtedly prevent a great number in this rank of
life from following the bent of their inclinations in an early
attachment. Others, guided either by a stronger passion, or a weaker
judgement, break through these restraints, and it would be hard indeed,
if the gratification of so delightful a passion as virtuous love, did
not, sometimes, more than counterbalance all its attendant evils. But I
fear it must be owned that the more general consequences of such
marriages are rather calculated to justify than to repress the
forebodings of the prudent.

The sons of tradesmen and farmers are exhorted not to marry, and
generally find it necessary to pursue this advice till they are settled
in some business or farm that may enable them to support a family.
These events may not, perhaps, occur till they are far advanced in
life. The scarcity of farms is a very general complaint in England. And
the competition in every kind of business is so great that it is not
possible that all should be successful.

The labourer who earns eighteen pence a day and lives with some degree
of comfort as a single man, will hesitate a little before he divides
that pittance among four or five, which seems to be but just sufficient
for one. Harder fare and harder labour he would submit to for the sake
of living with the woman that he loves, but he must feel conscious, if
he thinks at all, that should he have a large family, and any ill luck
whatever, no degree of frugality, no possible exertion of his manual
strength could preserve him from the heart-rending sensation of seeing
his children starve, or of forfeiting his independence, and being
obliged to the parish for their support. The love of independence is a
sentiment that surely none would wish to be erased from the breast of
man, though the parish law of England, it must be confessed, is a
system of all others the most calculated gradually to weaken this
sentiment, and in the end may eradicate it completely.

The servants who live in gentlemen's families have restraints that are
yet stronger to break through in venturing upon marriage. They possess
the necessaries, and even the comforts of life, almost in as great
plenty as their masters. Their work is easy and their food luxurious
compared with the class of labourers. And their sense of dependence is
weakened by the conscious power of changing their masters, if they feel
themselves offended. Thus comfortably situated at present, what are
their prospects in marrying? Without knowledge or capital, either for
business, or farming, and unused and therefore unable, to earn a
subsistence by daily labour, their only refuge seems to be a miserable
ale-house, which certainly offers no very enchanting prospect of a
happy evening to their lives. By much the greater part, therefore,
deterred by this uninviting view of their future situation, content
themselves with remaining single where they are.

If this sketch of the state of society in England be near the truth,
and I do not conceive that it is exaggerated, it will be allowed that
the preventive check to population in this country operates, though
with varied force, through all the classes of the community. The same
observation will hold true with regard to all old states. The effects,
indeed, of these restraints upon marriage are but too conspicuous in
the consequent vices that are produced in almost every part of the
world, vices that are continually involving both sexes in inextricable
unhappiness.




CHAPTER 5

The second, or positive check to population examined, in England--The
true cause why the immense sum collected in England for the poor does
not better their condition--The powerful tendency of the poor laws to
defeat their own purpose--Palliative of the distresses of the poor
proposed--The absolute impossibility, from the fixed laws of our
nature, that the pressure of want can ever be completely removed from
the lower classes of society--All the checks to population may be
resolved into misery or vice.


The positive check to population, by which I mean the check that
represses an increase which is already begun, is confined chiefly,
though not perhaps solely, to the lowest orders of society.

This check is not so obvious to common view as the other I have
mentioned, and, to prove distinctly the force and extent of its
operation would require, perhaps, more data than we are in possession
of. But I believe it has been very generally remarked by those who have
attended to bills of mortality that of the number of children who die
annually, much too great a proportion belongs to those who may be
supposed unable to give their offspring proper food and attention,
exposed as they are occasionally to severe distress and confined,
perhaps, to unwholesome habitations and hard labour. This mortality
among the children of the poor has been constantly taken notice of in
all towns. It certainly does not prevail in an equal degree in the
country, but the subject has not hitherto received sufficient attention
to enable anyone to say that there are not more deaths in proportion
among the children of the poor, even in the country, than among those
of the middling and higher classes. Indeed, it seems difficult to
suppose that a labourer's wife who has six children, and who is
sometimes in absolute want of bread, should be able always to give them
the food and attention necessary to support life. The sons and
daughters of peasants will not be found such rosy cherubs in real life
as they are described to be in romances. It cannot fail to be remarked
by those who live much in the country that the sons of labourers are
very apt to be stunted in their growth, and are a long while arriving
at maturity. Boys that you would guess to be fourteen or fifteen are,
upon inquiry, frequently found to be eighteen or nineteen. And the lads
who drive plough, which must certainly be a healthy exercise, are very
rarely seen with any appearance of calves to their legs: a circumstance
which can only be attributed to a want either of proper or of
sufficient nourishment.

To remedy the frequent distresses of the common people, the poor laws
of England have been instituted; but it is to be feared, that though
they may have alleviated a little the intensity of individual
misfortune, they have spread the general evil over a much larger
surface. It is a subject often started in conversation and mentioned
always as a matter of great surprise that, notwithstanding the immense
sum that is annually collected for the poor in England, there is still
so much distress among them. Some think that the money must be
embezzled, others that the church-wardens and overseers consume the
greater part of it in dinners. All agree that somehow or other it must
be very ill-managed. In short the fact that nearly three millions are
collected annually for the poor and yet that their distresses are not
removed is the subject of continual astonishment. But a man who sees a
little below the surface of things would be very much more astonished
if the fact were otherwise than it is observed to be, or even if a
collection universally of eighteen shillings in the pound, instead of
four, were materially to alter it. I will state a case which I hope
will elucidate my meaning.

Suppose that by a subscription of the rich the eighteen pence a day
which men earn now was made up five shillings, it might be imagined,
perhaps, that they would then be able to live comfortably and have a
piece of meat every day for their dinners. But this would be a very
false conclusion. The transfer of three shillings and sixpence a day to
every labourer would not increase the quantity of meat in the country.
There is not at present enough for all to have a decent share. What
would then be the consequence? The competition among the buyers in the
market of meat would rapidly raise the price from sixpence or
sevenpence, to two or three shillings in the pound, and the commodity
would not be divided among many more than it is at present. When an
article is scarce, and cannot be distributed to all, he that can shew
the most valid patent, that is, he that offers most money, becomes the
possessor. If we can suppose the competition among the buyers of meat
to continue long enough for a greater number of cattle to be reared
annually, this could only be done at the expense of the corn, which
would be a very disadvantagous exchange, for it is well known that the
country could not then support the same population, and when
subsistence is scarce in proportion to the number of people, it is of
little consequence whether the lowest members of the society possess
eighteen pence or five shillings. They must at all events be reduced to
live upon the hardest fare and in the smallest quantity.

It will be said, perhaps, that the increased number of purchasers in
every article would give a spur to productive industry and that the
whole produce of the island would be increased. This might in some
degree be the case. But the spur that these fancied riches would give
to population would more than counterbalance it, and the increased
produce would be to be divided among a more than proportionably
increased number of people. All this time I am supposing that the same
quantity of work would be done as before. But this would not really
take place. The receipt of five shillings a day, instead of eighteen
pence, would make every man fancy himself comparatively rich and able
to indulge himself in many hours or days of leisure. This would give a
strong and immediate check to productive industry, and, in a short
time, not only the nation would be poorer, but the lower classes
themselves would be much more distressed than when they received only
eighteen pence a day.

A collection from the rich of eighteen shillings in the pound, even if
distributed in the most judicious manner, would have a little the same
effect as that resulting from the supposition I have just made, and no
possible contributions or sacrifices of the rich, particularly in
money, could for any time prevent the recurrence of distress among the
lower members of society, whoever they were. Great changes might,
indeed, be made. The rich might become poor, and some of the poor rich,
but a part of the society must necessarily feel a difficulty of living,
and this difficulty will naturally fall on the least fortunate members.

It may at first appear strange, but I believe it is true, that I cannot
by means of money raise a poor man and enable him to live much better
than he did before, without proportionably depressing others in the
same class. If I retrench the quantity of food consumed in my house,
and give him what I have cut off, I then benefit him, without
depressing any but myself and family, who, perhaps, may be well able to
bear it. If I turn up a piece of uncultivated land, and give him the
produce, I then benefit both him and all the members of the society,
because what he before consumed is thrown into the common stock, and
probably some of the new produce with it. But if I only give him money,
supposing the produce of the country to remain the same, I give him a
title to a larger share of that produce than formerly, which share he
cannot receive without diminishing the shares of others. It is evident
that this effect, in individual instances, must be so small as to be
totally imperceptible; but still it must exist, as many other effects
do, which, like some of the insects that people the air, elude our
grosser perceptions.

Supposing the quantity of food in any country to remain the same for
many years together, it is evident that this food must be divided
according to the value of each man's patent, or the sum of money that
he can afford to spend on this commodity so universally in request. (Mr
Godwin calls the wealth that a man receives from his ancestors a mouldy
patent. It may, I think, very properly be termed a patent, but I hardly
see the propriety of calling it a mouldy one, as it is an article in
such constant use.) It is a demonstrative truth, therefore, that the
patents of one set of men could not be increased in value without
diminishing the value of the patents of some other set of men. If the
rich were to subscribe and give five shillings a day to five hundred
thousand men without retrenching their own tables, no doubt can exist,
that as these men would naturally live more at their ease and consume a
greater quantity of provisions, there would be less food remaining to
divide among the rest, and consequently each man's patent would be
diminished in value or the same number of pieces of silver would
purchase a smaller quantity of subsistence.

An increase of population without a proportional increase of food will
evidently have the same effect in lowering the value of each man's
patent. The food must necessarily be distributed in smaller quantities,
and consequently a day's labour will purchase a smaller quantity of
provisions. An increase in the price of provisions would arise either
from an increase of population faster than the means of subsistence, or
from a different distribution of the money of the society. The food of
a country that has been long occupied, if it be increasing, increases
slowly and regularly and cannot be made to answer any sudden demands,
but variations in the distribution of the money of a society are not
infrequently occurring, and are undoubtedly among the causes that
occasion the continual variations which we observe in the price of
provisions.

The poor laws of England tend to depress the general condition of the
poor in these two ways. Their first obvious tendency is to increase
population without increasing the food for its support. A poor man may
marry with little or no prospect of being able to support a family in
independence. They may be said therefore in some measure to create the
poor which they maintain, and as the provisions of the country must, in
consequence of the increased population, be distributed to every man in
smaller proportions, it is evident that the labour of those who are not
supported by parish assistance will purchase a smaller quantity of
provisions than before and consequently more of them must be driven to
ask for support.

Secondly, the quantity of provisions consumed in workhouses upon a part
of the society that cannot in general be considered as the most
valuable part diminishes the shares that would otherwise belong to more
industrious and more worthy members, and thus in the same manner forces
more to become dependent. If the poor in the workhouses were to live
better than they now do, this new distribution of the money of the
society would tend more conspicuously to depress the condition of those
out of the workhouses by occasioning a rise in the price of provisions.

Fortunately for England, a spirit of independence still remains among
the peasantry. The poor laws are strongly calculated to eradicate this
spirit. They have succeeded in part, but had they succeeded as
completely as might have been expected their pernicious tendency would
not have been so long concealed.

Hard as it may appear in individual instances, dependent poverty ought
to be held disgraceful. Such a stimulus seems to be absolutely
necessary to promote the happiness of the great mass of mankind, and
every general attempt to weaken this stimulus, however benevolent its
apparent intention, will always defeat its own purpose. If men are
induced to marry from a prospect of parish provision, with little or no
chance of maintaining their families in independence, they are not only
unjustly tempted to bring unhappiness and dependence upon themselves
and children, but they are tempted, without knowing it, to injure all
in the same class with themselves. A labourer who marries without being
able to support a family may in some respects be considered as an enemy
to all his fellow-labourers.

I feel no doubt whatever that the parish laws of England have
contributed to raise the price of provisions and to lower the real
price of labour. They have therefore contributed to impoverish that
class of people whose only possession is their labour. It is also
difficult to suppose that they have not powerfully contributed to
generate that carelessness and want of frugality observable among the
poor, so contrary to the disposition frequently to be remarked among
petty tradesmen and small farmers. The labouring poor, to use a vulgar
expression, seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants
employ their whole attention, and they seldom think of the future. Even
when they have an opportunity of saving they seldom exercise it, but
all that is beyond their present necessities goes, generally speaking,
to the ale-house. The poor laws of England may therefore be said to
diminish both the power and the will to save among the common people,
and thus to weaken one of the strongest incentives to sobriety and
industry, and consequently to happiness.

It is a general complaint among master manufacturers that high wages
ruin all their workmen, but it is difficult to conceive that these men
would not save a part of their high wages for the future support of
their families, instead of spending it in drunkenness and dissipation,
if they did not rely on parish assistance for support in case of
accidents. And that the poor employed in manufactures consider this
assistance as a reason why they may spend all the wages they earn and
enjoy themselves while they can appears to be evident from the number
of families that, upon the failure of any great manufactory,
immediately fall upon the parish, when perhaps the wages earned in this
manufactory while it flourished were sufficiently above the price of
common country labour to have allowed them to save enough for their
support till they could find some other channel for their industry.

A man who might not be deterred from going to the ale-house from the
consideration that on his death, or sickness, he should leave his wife
and family upon the parish might yet hesitate in thus dissipating his
earnings if he were assured that, in either of these cases, his family
must starve or be left to the support of casual bounty. In China, where
the real as well as nominal price of labour is very low, sons are yet
obliged by law to support their aged and helpless parents. Whether such
a law would be advisable in this country I will not pretend to
determine. But it seems at any rate highly improper, by positive
institutions, which render dependent poverty so general, to weaken that
disgrace, which for the best and most humane reasons ought to attach to
it.

The mass of happiness among the common people cannot but be diminished
when one of the strongest checks to idleness and dissipation is thus
removed, and when men are thus allured to marry with little or no
prospect of being able to maintain a family in independence. Every
obstacle in the way of marriage must undoubtedly be considered as a
species of unhappiness. But as from the laws of our nature some check
to population must exist, it is better that it should be checked from a
foresight of the difficulties attending a family and the fear of
dependent poverty than that it should be encouraged, only to be
repressed afterwards by want and sickness.

It should be remembered always that there is an essential difference
between food and those wrought commodities, the raw materials of which
are in great plenty. A demand for these last will not fail to create
them in as great a quantity as they are wanted. The demand for food has
by no means the same creative power. In a country where all the fertile
spots have been seized, high offers are necessary to encourage the
farmer to lay his dressing on land from which he cannot expect a
profitable return for some years. And before the prospect of advantage
is sufficiently great to encourage this sort of agricultural
enterprise, and while the new produce is rising, great distresses may
be suffered from the want of it. The demand for an increased quantity
of subsistence is, with few exceptions, constant everywhere, yet we see
how slowly it is answered in all those countries that have been long
occupied.

The poor laws of England were undoubtedly instituted for the most
benevolent purpose, but there is great reason to think that they have
not succeeded in their intention. They certainly mitigate some cases of
very severe distress which might otherwise occur, yet the state of the
poor who are supported by parishes, considered in all its
circumstances, is very far from being free from misery. But one of the
principal objections to them is that for this assistance which some of
the poor receive, in itself almost a doubtful blessing, the whole class
of the common people of England is subjected to a set of grating,
inconvenient, and tyrannical laws, totally inconsistent with the
genuine spirit of the constitution. The whole business of settlements,
even in its present amended state, is utterly contradictory to all
ideas of freedom. The parish persecution of men whose families are
likely to become chargeable, and of poor women who are near lying-in,
is a most disgraceful and disgusting tyranny. And the obstructions
continuity occasioned in the market of labour by these laws have a
constant tendency to add to the difficulties of those who are
struggling to support themselves without assistance.

These evils attendant on the poor laws are in some degree irremediable.
If assistance be to be distributed to a certain class of people, a
power must be given somewhere of discriminating the proper objects and
of managing the concerns of the institutions that are necessary, but
any great interference with the affairs of other people is a species of
tyranny, and in the common course of things the exercise of this power
may be expected to become grating to those who are driven to ask for
support. The tyranny of Justices, Church-wardens, and Overseers, is a
common complaint among the poor, but the fault does not lie so much in
these persons, who probably, before they were in power, were not worse
than other people, but in the nature of all such institutions.

The evil is perhaps gone too far to be remedied, but I feel little
doubt in my own mind that if the poor laws had never existed, though
there might have been a few more instances of very severe distress, yet
that the aggregate mass of happiness among the common people would have
been much greater than it is at present.

Mr Pitt's Poor Bill has the appearance of being framed with benevolent
intentions, and the clamour raised against it was in many respects ill
directed, and unreasonable. But it must be confessed that it possesses
in a high degree the great and radical defect of all systems of the
kind, that of tending to increase population without increasing the
means for its support, and thus to depress the condition of those that
are not supported by parishes, and, consequently, to create more poor.

To remove the wants of the lower classes of society is indeed an
arduous task. The truth is that the pressure of distress on this part
of a community is an evil so deeply seated that no human ingenuity can
reach it. Were I to propose a palliative, and palliatives are all that
the nature of the case will admit, it should be, in the first place,
the total abolition of all the present parish-laws. This would at any
rate give liberty and freedom of action to the peasantry of England,
which they can hardly be said to possess at present. They would then be
able to settle without interruption, wherever there was a prospect of a
greater plenty of work and a higher price for labour. The market of
labour would then be free, and those obstacles removed which, as things
are now, often for a considerable time prevent the price from rising
according to the demand.

Secondly, premiums might be given for turning up fresh land, and it
possible encouragements held out to agriculture above manufactures, and
to tillage above grazing. Every endeavour should be used to weaken and
destroy all those institutions relating to corporations,
apprenticeships, etc., which cause the labours of agriculture to be
worse paid than the labours of trade and manufactures. For a country
can never produce its proper quantity of food while these distinctions
remain in favour of artisans. Such encouragements to agriculture would
tend to furnish the market with an increasing quantity of healthy work,
and at the same time, by augmenting the produce of the country, would
raise the comparative price of labour and ameliorate the condition of
the labourer. Being now in better circumstances, and seeing no prospect
of parish assistance, he would be more able, as well as more inclined,
to enter into associations for providing against the sickness of
himself or family.

Lastly, for cases of extreme distress, county workhouses might be
established, supported by rates upon the whole kingdom, and free for
persons of all counties, and indeed of all nations. The fare should be
hard, and those that were able obliged to work. It would be desirable
that they should not be considered as comfortable asylums in all
difficulties, but merely as places where severe distress might find
some alleviation. A part of these houses might be separated, or others
built for a most beneficial purpose, which has not been infrequently
taken notice of, that of providing a place where any person, whether
native or foreigner, might do a day's work at all times and receive the
market price for it. Many cases would undoubtedly be left for the
exertion of individual benevolence.

A plan of this kind, the preliminary of which should be an abolition of
all the present parish laws, seems to be the best calculated to
increase the mass of happiness among the common people of England. To
prevent the recurrence of misery, is, alas! beyond the power of man. In
the vain endeavour to attain what in the nature of things is
impossible, we now sacrifice not only possible but certain benefits. We
tell the common people that if they will submit to a code of tyrannical
regulations, they shall never be in want. They do submit to these
regulations. They perform their part of the contract, but we do not,
nay cannot, perform ours, and thus the poor sacrifice the valuable
blessing of liberty and receive nothing that can be called an
equivalent in return.

Notwithstanding, then, the institution of the poor laws in England, I
think it will be allowed that considering the state of the lower
classes altogether, both in the towns and in the country, the
distresses which they suffer from the want of proper and sufficient
food, from hard labour and unwholesome habitations, must operate as a
constant check to incipient population.

To these two great checks to population, in all long occupied
countries, which I have called the preventive and the positive checks,
may be added vicious customs with respect to women, great cities,
unwholesome manufactures, luxury, pestilence, and war.

All these checks may be fairly resolved into misery and vice. And that
these are the true causes of the slow increase of population in all the
states of modern Europe, will appear sufficiently evident from the
comparatively rapid increase that has invariably taken place whenever
these causes have been in any considerable degree removed.




CHAPTER 6

New colonies--Reasons for their rapid increase--North American
Colonies--Extraordinary instance of increase in the back
settlements--Rapidity with which even old states recover the ravages of
war, pestilence, famine, or the convulsions of nature.


It has been universally remarked that all new colonies settled in
healthy countries, where there was plenty of room and food, have
constantly increased with astonishing rapidity in their population.
Some of the colonies from ancient Greece, in no very long period, more
than equalled their parent states in numbers and strength. And not to
dwell on remote instances, the European settlements in the new world
bear ample testimony to the truth of a remark, which, indeed, has
never, that I know of, been doubted. A plenty of rich land, to be had
for little or nothing, is so powerful a cause of population as to
overcome all other obstacles. No settlements could well have been worse
managed than those of Spain in Mexico, Peru, and Quito. The tyranny,
superstition, and vices of the mother-country were introduced in ample
quantities among her children. Exorbitant taxes were exacted by the
Crown. The most arbitrary restrictions were imposed on their trade. And
the governors were not behind hand in rapacity and extortion for
themselves as well as their master. Yet, under all these difficulties,
the colonies made a quick progress in population. The city of Lima,
founded since the conquest, is represented by Ulloa as containing fifty
thousand inhabitants near fifty years ago. Quito, which had been but a
hamlet of indians, is represented by the same author as in his time
equally populous. Mexico is said to contain a hundred thousand
inhabitants, which, notwithstanding the exaggerations of the Spanish
writers, is supposed to be five times greater than what it contained in
the time of Montezuma.

In the Portuguese colony of Brazil, governed with almost equal tyranny,
there were supposed to be, thirty years since, six hundred thousand
inhabitants of European extraction.

The Dutch and French colonies, though under the government of exclusive
companies of merchants, which, as Dr Adam Smith says very justly, is
the worst of all possible governments, still persisted in thriving
under every disadvantage.

But the English North American colonies, now the powerful people of the
United States of America, made by far the most rapid progress. To the
plenty of good land which they possessed in common with the Spanish and
Portuguese settlements, they added a greater degree of liberty and
equality. Though not without some restrictions on their foreign
commerce, they were allowed a perfect liberty of managing their own
internal affairs. The political institutions that prevailed were
favourable to the alienation and division of property. Lands that were
not cultivated by the proprietor within a limited time were declared
grantable to any other person. In Pennsylvania there was no right of
primogeniture, and in the provinces of New England the eldest had only
a double share. There were no tithes in any of the States, and scarcely
any taxes. And on account of the extreme cheapness of good land a
capital could not be more advantageously employed than in agriculture,
which at the same time that it supplies the greatest quantity of
healthy work affords much the most valuable produce to the society.

The consequence of these favourable circumstances united was a rapidity
of increase probably without parallel in history. Throughout all the
northern colonies, the population was found to double itself in
twenty-five years. The original number of persons who had settled in
the four provinces of new England in 1643 was 21,200.(I take these
figures from Dr Price's two volumes of Observations; not having Dr
Styles' pamphlet, from which he quotes, by me.) Afterwards, it is
supposed that more left them than went to them. In the year 1760, they
were increased to half a million. They had therefore all along doubled
their own number in twenty-five years. In New Jersey the period of
doubling appeared to be twenty-two years; and in Rhode island still
less. In the back settlements, where the inhabitants applied themselves
solely to agriculture, and luxury was not known, they were found to
double their own number in fifteen years, a most extraordinary instance
of increase. Along the sea coast, which would naturally be first
inhabited, the period of doubling was about thirty-five years; and in
some of the maritime towns, the population was absolutely at a stand.

(In instances of this kind the powers of the earth appear to be fully
equal to answer it the demands for food that can be made upon it by
man. But we should be led into an error if we were thence to suppose
that population and food ever really increase in the same ratio. The
one is still a geometrical and the other an arithmetical ratio, that
is, one increases by multiplication, and the other by addition. Where
there are few people, and a great quantity of fertile land, the power
of the earth to afford a yearly increase of food may be compared to a
great reservoir of water, supplied by a moderate stream. The faster
population increases, the more help will be got to draw off the water,
and consequently an increasing quantity will be taken every year. But
the sooner, undoubtedly, will the reservoir be exhausted, and the
streams only remain. When acre has been added to acre, till all the
fertile land is occupied, the yearly increase of food will depend upon
the amelioration of the land already in possession; and even this
moderate stream will be gradually diminishing. But population, could it
be supplied with food, would go on with unexhausted vigour, and the
increase of one period would furnish the power of a greater increase
the next, and this without any limit.)

These facts seem to shew that population increases exactly in the
proportion that the two great checks to it, misery and vice, are
removed, and that there is not a truer criterion of the happiness and
innocence of a people than the rapidity of their increase. The
unwholesomeness of towns, to which some persons are necessarily driven
from the nature of their trades, must be considered as a species of
misery, and every the slightest check to marriage, from a prospect of
the difficulty of maintaining a family, may be fairly classed under the
same head. In short it is difficult to conceive any check to population
which does not come under the description of some species of misery or
vice.

The population of the thirteen American States before the war was
reckoned at about three millions. Nobody imagines that Great Britain is
less populous at present for the emigration of the small parent stock
that produced these numbers. On the contrary, a certain degree of
emigration is known to be favourable to the population of the mother
country. It has been particularly remarked that the two Spanish
provinces from which the greatest number of people emigrated to
America, became in consequence more populous. Whatever was the original
number of British emigrants that increased so fast in the North
American Colonies, let us ask, why does not an equal number produce an
equal increase in the same time in Great Britain? The great and obvious
cause to be assigned is the want of room and food, or, in other words,
misery, and that this is a much more powerful cause even than vice
appears sufficiently evident from the rapidity with which even old
states recover the desolations of war, pestilence, or the accidents of
nature. They are then for a short time placed a little in the situation
of new states, and the effect is always answerable to what might be
expected. If the industry of the inhabitants be not destroyed by fear
or tyranny, subsistence will soon increase beyond the wants of the
reduced numbers, and the invariable consequence will be that population
which before, perhaps, was nearly stationary, will begin immediately to
increase.

The fertile province of Flanders, which has been so often the seat of
the most destructive wars, after a respite of a few years, has appeared
always as fruitful and as populous as ever. Even the Palatinate lifted
up its head again after the execrable ravages of Louis the Fourteenth.
The effects of the dreadful plague in London in 1666 were not
perceptible fifteen or twenty years afterwards. The traces of the most
destructive famines in China and Indostan are by all accounts very soon
obliterated. It may even be doubted whether Turkey and Egypt are upon
an average much less populous for the plagues that periodically lay
them waste. If the number of people which they contain be less now than
formerly, it is, probably, rather to be attributed to the tyranny and
oppression of the government under which they groan, and the consequent
discouragements to agriculture, than to the loss which they sustain by
the plague. The most tremendous convulsions of nature, such as volcanic
eruptions and earthquakes, if they do not happen so frequently as to
drive away the inhabitants, or to destroy their spirit of industry,
have but a trifling effect on the average population of any state.
Naples, and the country under Vesuvius, are still very populous,
notwithstanding the repeated eruptions of that mountain. And Lisbon and
Lima are now, probably, nearly in the same state with regard to
population as they were before the last earthquakes.




CHAPTER 7

A probable cause of epidemics--Extracts from Mr Suessmilch's
tables--Periodical returns of sickly seasons to be expected in certain
cases--Proportion of births to burials for short periods in any country
an inadequate criterion of the real average increase of
population--Best criterion of a permanent increase of population--Great
frugality of living one of the causes of the famines of China and
Indostan--Evil tendency of one of the clauses in Mr Pitt's Poor
Bill--Only one proper way of encouraging population--Causes of the
Happiness of nations--Famine, the last and most dreadful mode by which
nature represses a redundant population--The three propositions
considered as established.


By great attention to cleanliness, the plague seems at length to be
completely expelled from London. But it is not improbable that among
the secondary causes that produce even sickly seasons and epidemics
ought to be ranked a crowded population and unwholesome and
insufficient food. I have been led to this remark, by looking over some
of the tables of Mr Suessmilch, which Dr Price has extracted in one of
his notes to the postscript on the controversy respecting the
population of England and Wales. They are considered as very correct,
and if such tables were general, they would throw great light on the
different ways by which population is repressed and prevented from
increasing beyond the means of subsistence in any country. I will
extract a part of the tables, with Dr Price's remarks.


  IN THE KINGDOM OF PRUSSIA, AND DUKEDOM OF LITHUANIA

                                              Proportion   Proportion
                   Births  Burials Marriages of Births to of Births to
                                              Marriages     Burials
  10 Yrs to 1702   21,963  14,718   5,928      37 to 10    150 to 100
  5 Yrs to 1716    21,602  11,984   4,968      37 to 10    180 to 100
  5 Yrs to 1756    28,392  19,154   5,599      50 to 10    148 to 100

"N.B. In 1709 and 1710, a pestilence carried off 247,733 of the
inhabitants of this country, and in 1736 and 1737, epidemics prevailed,
which again checked its increase."


It may be remarked, that the greatest proportion of births to burials,
was in the five years after the great pestilence.


  DUCHY OF POMERANIA

                                              Proportion   Proportion
  Annual Average   Births  Burials Marriages of Births to of Births to
                                              Marriages     Burials
  6 yrs to 1702   6,540     4,647   1,810      36 to 10    140 to 100
  6 yrs to 1708   7,455     4,208   1,875      39 to 10    177 to 100
  6 yrs to 1726   8,432     5,627   2,131      39 to 10    150 to 100
  6 yrs to 1756  12,767     9,281   2,957      43 to 10    137 to 100

"In this instance the inhabitants appear to have been almost doubled in
fifty-six years, no very bad epidemics having once interrupted the
increase, but the three years immediately follow ing the last period
(to 1759) were so sickly that the births were sunk to 10,229 and the
burials raised to 15,068."


Is it not probable that in this case the number of inhabitants had
increased faster than the food and the accommodations necessary to
preserve them in health? The mass of the people would, upon this
supposition, be obliged to live harder, and a greater number would be
crowded together in one house, and it is not surely improbable that
these were among the natural causes that produced the three sickly
years. These causes may produce such an effect, though the country,
absolutely considered, may not be extremely crowded and populous. In a
country even thinly inhabited, if an increase of population take place,
before more food is raised, and more houses are built, the inhabitants
must be distressed in some degree for room and subsistence. Were the
marriages in England, for the next eight or ten years, to be more
prolifick than usual, or even were a greater number of marriages than
usual to take place, supposing the number of houses to remain the same,
instead of five or six to a cottage, there must be seven or eight, and
this, added to the necessity of harder living, would probably have a
very unfavourable effect on the health of the common people.


  NEUMARK OF BRANDENBURGH

                                              Proportion   Proportion
  Annual Average   Births  Burials Marriages of Births to of Births to
                                              Marriages    Burials
  5 yrs to 1701    5,433    3,483  1,436      37 to 10    155 to 100
  5 yrs to 1726    7,012    4,254  1,713      40 to 10    164 to 100
  5 yrs to 1756    7,978    5,567  1,891      42 to 10    143 to 100

"Epidemics prevailed for six years, from 1736, to 1741, which checked
the increase."


  DUKEDOM OF MAGDEBURGH

                                              Proportion   Proportion
  Annual Average   Births  Burials Marriages of Births to of Births to
                                              Marriages    Burials
  5 yrs to 1702    6,431   4,103   1,681      38 to 10    156 to 100
  5 yrs to 1717    7,590   5,335   2,076      36 to 10    142 to 100
  5 yrs to 1756    8,850   8,069   2,193      40 to 10    109 to 100

"The years 1738, 1740, 1750, and 1751, were particularly sickly."


For further information on this subject, I refer the reader to Mr
Suessmilch's tables. The extracts that I have made are sufficient to
shew the periodical, though irregular, returns of sickly seasons, and
it seems highly probable that a scantiness of room and food was one of
the principal causes that occasioned them.

It appears from the tables that these countries were increasing rather
fast for old states, notwithstanding the occasional seasons that
prevailed. Cultivation must have been improving, and marriages,
consequently, encouraged. For the checks to population appear to have
been rather of the positive, than of the preventive kind. When from a
prospect of increasing plenty in any country, the weight that represses
population is in some degree removed, it is highly probable that the
motion will be continued beyond the operation of the cause that first
impelled it. Or, to be more particular, when the increasing produce of
a country, and the increasing demand for labour, so far ameliorate the
condition of the labourer as greatly to encourage marriage, it is
probable that the custom of early marriages will continue till the
population of the country has gone beyond the increased produce, and
sickly seasons appear to be the natural and necessary consequence. I
should expect, therefore, that those countries where subsistence was
increasing sufficiency at times to encourage population but not to
answer all its demands, would be more subject to periodical epidemics
than those where the population could more completely accommodate
itself to the average produce.

An observation the converse of this will probably also be found true.
In those countries that are subject to periodical sicknesses, the
increase of population, or the excess of births above the burials, will
be greater in the intervals of these periods than is usual, caeteris
paribus, in the countries not so much subject to such disorders. If
Turkey and Egypt have been nearly stationary in their average
population for the last century, in the intervals of their periodical
plagues, the births must have exceeded the burials in a greater
proportion than in such countries as France and England.

The average proportion of births to burials in any country for a period
of five to ten years, will hence appear to be a very inadequate
criterion by which to judge of its real progress in population. This
proportion certainly shews the rate of increase during those five or
ten years; but we can by no means thence infer what had been the
increase for the twenty years before, or what would be the increase for
the twenty years after. Dr Price observes that Sweden, Norway, Russia,
and the kingdom of Naples, are increasing fast; but the extracts from
registers that he has given are not for periods of sufficient extent to
establish the fact. It is highly probable, however, that Sweden,
Norway, and Russia, are really increasing their population, though not
at the rate that the proportion of births to burials for the short
periods that Dr Price takes would seem to shew. (See Dr Price's
Observations, Vol. ii, postscript to the controversy on the population
of England and Wales.) For five years, ending in 1777, the proportion
of births to burials in the kingdom of Naples was 144 to 100, but there
is reason to suppose that this proportion would indicate an increase
much greater than would be really found to have taken place in that
kingdom during a period of a hundred years.

Dr Short compared the registers of many villages and market towns in
England for two periods; the first, from Queen Elizabeth to the middle
of the last century, and the second, from different years at the end of
the last century to the middle of the present. And from a comparison of
these extracts, it appears that in the former period the births
exceeded the burials in the proportion of 124 to 100, but in the
latter, only in the proportion of 111 to 100. Dr Price thinks that the
registers in the former period are not to be depended upon, but,
probably, in this instance they do not give incorrect proportions. At
least there are many reasons for expecting to find a greater excess of
births above the burials in the former period than in the latter. In
the natural progress of the population of any country, more good land
will, caeteris paribus, be taken into cultivation in the earlier stages
of it than in the later. (I say 'caeteris paribus', because the
increase of the produce of any country will always very greatly depend
on the spirit of industry that prevails, and the way in which it is
directed. The knowledge and habits of the people, and other temporary
causes, particularly the degree of civil liberty and equality existing
at the time, must always have great influence in exciting and directing
this spirit.) And a greater proportional yearly increase of produce
will almost invariably be followed by a greater proportional increase
of population. But, besides this great cause, which would naturally
give the excess of births above burials greater at the end of Queen
Elizabeth's reign than in the middle of the present century, I cannot
help thinking that the occasional ravages of the plague in the former
period must have had some tendency to increase this proportion. If an
average of ten years had been taken in the intervals of the returns of
this dreadful disorder, or if the years of plague had been rejected as
accidental, the registers would certainly give the proportion of births
to burials too high for the real average increase of the population.
For some few years after the great plague in 1666, it is probable that
there was a more than usual excess of births above burials,
particularly if Dr Price's opinion be founded, that England was more
populous at the revolution (which happened only twenty-two years
afterwards) than it is at present.

Mr King, in 1693, stated the proportion of the births to the burials
throughout the Kingdom, exclusive of London, as 115 to 100. Dr Short
makes it, in the middle of the present century, 111 to 100, including
London. The proportion in France for five years, ending in 1774, was
117 to 100. If these statements are near the truth; and if there are no
very great variations at particular periods in the proportions, it
would appear that the population of France and England has accommodated
itself very nearly to the average produce of each country. The
discouragements to marriage, the consequent vicious habits, war,
luxury, the silent though certain depopulation of large towns, and the
close habitations, and insufficient food of many of the poor, prevent
population from increasing beyond the means of subsistence; and, if I
may use an expression which certainly at first appears strange,
supercede the necessity of great and ravaging epidemics to repress what
is redundant. Were a wasting plague to sweep off two millions in
England, and six millions in France, there can be no doubt whatever
that, after the inhabitants had recovered from the dreadful shock, the
proportion of births to burials would be much above what it is in
either country at present.

In New Jersey, the proportion of births to deaths on an average of
seven years, ending in 1743, was as 300 to 100. In France and England,
taking the highest proportion, it is as 117 to 100. Great and
astonishing as this difference is, we ought not to be so wonder-struck
at it as to attribute it to the miraculous interposition of heaven. The
causes of it are not remote, latent and mysterious; but near us, round
about us, and open to the investigation of every inquiring mind. It
accords with the most liberal spirit of philosophy to suppose that not
a stone can fall, or a plant rise, without the immediate agency of
divine power. But we know from experience that these operations of what
we call nature have been conducted almost invariably according to fixed
laws. And since the world began, the causes of population and
depopulation have probably been as constant as any of the laws of
nature with which we are acquainted.

The passion between the sexes has appeared in every age to be so nearly
the same that it may always be considered, in algebraic language, as a
given quantity. The great law of necessity which prevents population
from increasing in any country beyond the food which it can either
produce or acquire, is a law so open to our view, so obvious and
evident to our understandings, and so completely confirmed by the
experience of every age, that we cannot for a moment doubt it. The
different modes which nature takes to prevent or repress a redundant
population do not appear, indeed, to us so certain and regular, but
though we cannot always predict the mode we may with certainty predict
the fact. If the proportion of births to deaths for a few years
indicate an increase of numbers much beyond the proportional increased
or acquired produce of the country, we may be perfectly certain that
unless an emigration takes place, the deaths will shortly exceed the
births; and that the increase that had taken place for a few years
cannot be the real average increase of the population of the country.
Were there no other depopulating causes, every country would, without
doubt, be subject to periodical pestilences or famine.

The only true criterion of a real and permanent increase in the
population of any country is the increase of the means of subsistence.
But even, this criterion is subject to some slight variations which
are, however, completely open to our view and observations. In some
countries population appears to have been forced, that is, the people
have been habituated by degrees to live almost upon the smallest
possible quantity of food. There must have been periods in such
counties when population increased permanently, without an increase in
the means of subsistence. China seems to answer to this description. If
the accounts we have of it are to be trusted, the lower classes of
people are in the habit of living almost upon the smallest possible
quantity of food and are glad to get any putrid offals that European
labourers would rather starve than eat. The law in China which permits
parents to expose their children has tended principally thus to force
the population. A nation in this state must necessarily be subject to
famines. Where a country is so populous in proportion to the means of
subsistence that the average produce of it is but barely sufficient to
support the lives of the inhabitants, any deficiency from the badness
of seasons must be fatal. It is probable that the very frugal manner in
which the Gentoos are in the habit of living contributes in some degree
to the famines of Indostan.

In America, where the reward of labour is at present so liberal, the
lower classes might retrench very considerably in a year of scarcity
without materially distressing themselves. A famine therefore seems to
be almost impossible. It may be expected that in the progress of the
population of America, the labourers will in time be much less
liberally rewarded. The numbers will in this case permanently increase
without a proportional increase in the means of subsistence.

In the different states of Europe there must be some variations in the
proportion between the number of inhabitants and the quantity of food
consumed, arising from the different habits of living that prevail in
each state. The labourers of the South of England are so accustomed to
eat fine wheaten bread that they will suffer themselves to be half
starved before they will submit to live like the Scotch peasants. They
might perhaps in time, by the constant operation of the hard law of
necessity, be reduced to live even like the Lower Chinese, and the
country would then, with the same quantity of food, support a greater
population. But to effect this must always be a most difficult, and,
every friend to humanity will hope, an abortive attempt. Nothing is so
common as to hear of encouragements that ought to be given to
population. If the tendency of mankind to increase be so great as I
have represented it to be, it may appear strange that this increase
does not come when it is thus repeatedly called for. The true reason is
that the demand for a greater population is made without preparing the
funds necessary to support it. Increase the demand for agricultural
labour by promoting cultivation, and with it consequently increase the
produce of the country, and ameliorate the condition of the labourer,
and no apprehensions whatever need be entertained of the proportional
increase of population. An attempt to effect this purpose in any other
way is vicious, cruel, and tyrannical, and in any state of tolerable
freedom cannot therefore succeed. It may appear to be the interest of
the rulers, and the rich of a state, to force population, and thereby
lower the price of labour, and consequently the expense of fleets and
armies, and the cost of manufactures for foreign sale; but every
attempt of the kind should be carefully watched and strenuously
resisted by the friends of the poor, particularly when it comes under
the deceitful garb of benevolence, and is likely, on that account, to
be cheerfully and cordially received by the common people.

I entirely acquit Mr Pitt of any sinister intention in that clause of
his Poor Bill which allows a shilling a week to every labourer for each
child he has above three. I confess, that before the bill was brought
into Parliament, and for some time after, I thought that such a
regulation would be highly beneficial, but further reflection on the
subject has convinced me that if its object be to better the condition
of the poor, it is calculated to defeat the very purpose which it has
in view. It has no tendency that I can discover to increase the produce
of the country, and if it tend to increase the population, without
increasing the produce, the necessary and inevitable consequence
appears to be that the same produce must be divided among a greater
number, and consequently that a day's labour will purchase a smaller
quantity of provisions, and the poor therefore in general must be more
distressed.

I have mentioned some cases where population may permanently increase
without a proportional increase in the means of subsistence. But it is
evident that the variation in different states, between the food and
the numbers supported by it, is restricted to a limit beyond which it
cannot pass. In every country, the population of which is not
absolutely decreasing, the food must be necessarily sufficient to
support, and to continue, the race of labourers.

Other circumstances being the same, it may be affirmed that countries
are populous according to the quantity of human food which they
produce, and happy according to the liberality with which that food is
divided, or the quantity which a day's labour will purchase. Corn
countries are more populous than pasture countries, and rice countries
more populous than corn countries. The lands in England are not suited
to rice, but they would all bear potatoes; and Dr Adam Smith observes
that if potatoes were to become the favourite vegetable food of the
common people, and if the same quantity of land was employed in their
culture as is now employed in the culture of corn, the country would be
able to support a much greater population, and would consequently in a
very short time have it.

The happiness of a country does not depend, absolutely, upon its
poverty or its riches, upon its youth or its age, upon its being thinly
or fully inhabited, but upon the rapidity with which it is increasing,
upon the degree in which the yearly increase of food approaches to the
yearly increase of an unrestricted population. This approximation is
always the nearest in new colonies, where the knowledge and industry of
an old state operate on the fertile unappropriated land of a new one.
In other cases, the youth or the age of a state is not in this respect
of very great importance. It is probable that the food of Great Britain
is divided in as great plenty to the inhabitants, at the present
period, as it was two thousand, three thousand, or four thousand years
ago. And there is reason to believe that the poor and thinly inhabited
tracts of the Scotch Highlands are as much distressed by an overcharged
population as the rich and populous province of Flanders.

Were a country never to be overrun by a people more advanced in arts,
but left to its own natural progress in civilization; from the time
that its produce might be considered as an unit, to the time that it
might be considered as a million, during the lapse of many hundred
years, there would not be a single period when the mass of the people
could be said to be free from distress, either directly or indirectly,
for want of food. In every state in Europe, since we have first had
accounts of it, millions and millions of human existences have been
repressed from this simple cause; though perhaps in some of these
states an absolute famine has never been known.

Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource of nature. The
power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce
subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other
visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able
ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of
destruction; and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should
they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics,
pestilence, and plague, advance in terrific array, and sweep off their
thousands and ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete,
gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow
levels the population with the food of the world.

Must it not then be acknowledged by an attentive examiner of the
histories of mankind, that in every age and in every state in which man
has existed, or does now exist.

That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of
subsistence.

That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence
increase. And that the superior power of population it repressed, and
the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery
and vice?




CHAPTER 8

Mr Wallace--Error of supposing that the difficulty arising from
population is at a great distance--Mr Condorcet's sketch of the
progress of the human mind--Period when the oscillation, mentioned by
Mr Condorcet, ought to be applied to the human race.


To a person who draws the preceding obvious inferences, from a view of
the past and present state of mankind, it cannot but be a matter of
astonishment that all the writers on the perfectibility of man and of
society who have noticed the argument of an overcharged population,
treat it always very slightly and invariably represent the difficulties
arising from it as at a great and almost immeasurable distance. Even Mr
Wallace, who thought the argument itself of so much weight as to
destroy his whole system of equality, did not seem to be aware that any
difficulty would occur from this cause till the whole earth had been
cultivated like a garden and was incapable of any further increase of
produce. Were this really the case, and were a beautiful system of
equality in other respects practicable, I cannot think that our ardour
in the pursuit of such a scheme ought to be damped by the contemplation
of so remote a difficulty. An event at such a distance might fairly be
left to providence, but the truth is that if the view of the argument
given in this Essay be just the difficulty, so far from being remote,
would be imminent and immediate. At every period during the progress of
cultivation, from the present moment to the time when the whole earth
was become like a garden, the distress for want of food would be
constantly pressing on all mankind, if they were equal. Though the
produce of the earth might be increasing every year, population would
be increasing much faster, and the redundancy must necessarily be
repressed by the periodical or constant action of misery or vice.

Mr Condorcet's Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des Progres de l'Esprit
Humain, was written, it is said, under the pressure of that cruel
proscription which terminated in his death. If he had no hopes of its
being seen during his life and of its interesting France in his favour,
it is a singular instance of the attachment of a man to principles,
which every day's experience was so fatally for himself contradicting.
To see the human mind in one of the most enlightened nations of the
world, and after a lapse of some thousand years, debased by such a
fermentation of disgusting passions, of fear, cruelty, malice, revenge,
ambition, madness, and folly as would have disgraced the most savage
nation in the most barbarous age must have been such a tremendous shock
to his ideas of the necessary and inevitable progress of the human mind
that nothing but the firmest conviction of the truth of his principles,
in spite of all appearances, could have withstood.

This posthumous publication is only a sketch of a much larger work,
which he proposed should be executed. It necessarily, therefore, wants
that detail and application which can alone prove the truth of any
theory. A few observations will be sufficient to shew how completely
the theory is contradicted when it is applied to the real, and not to
an imaginary, state of things.

In the last division of the work, which treats of the future progress
of man towards perfection, he says, that comparing, in the different
civilized nations of Europe, the actual population with the extent of
territory, and observing their cultivation, their industry, their
divisions of labour, and their means of subsistence, we shall see that
it would be impossible to preserve the same means of subsistence, and,
consequently, the same population, without a number of individuals who
have no other means of supplying their wants than their industry.
Having allowed the necessity of such a class of men, and adverting
afterwards to the precarious revenue of those families that would
depend so entirely on the life and health of their chief, he says, very
justly: 'There exists then, a necessary cause of inequality, of
dependence, and even of misery, which menaces, without ceasing, the
most numerous and active class of our societies.' (To save time and
long quotations, I shall here give the substance of some of Mr
Condorcet's sentiments, and hope I shall not misrepresent them. But I
refer the reader to the work itself, which will amuse, if it does not
convince him.) The difficulty is just and well stated, and I am afraid
that the mode by which he proposes it should be removed will be found
inefficacious. By the application of calculations to the probabilities
of life and the interest of money, he proposes that a fund should be
established which should assure to the old an assistance, produced, in
part, by their own former savings, and, in part, by the savings of
individuals who in making the same sacrifice die before they reap the
benefit of it. The same, or a similar fund, should give assistance to
women and children who lose their husbands, or fathers, and afford a
capital to those who were of an age to found a new family, sufficient
for the proper development of their industry. These establishments, he
observes, might be made in the name and under the protection of the
society. Going still further, he says that, by the just application of
calculations, means might be found of more completely preserving a
state of equality, by preventing credit from being the exclusive
privilege of great fortunes, and yet giving it a basis equally solid,
and by rendering the progress of industry, and the activity of
commerce, less dependent on great capitalists.

Such establishments and calculations may appear very promising upon
paper, but when applied to real life they will be found to be
absolutely nugatory. Mr Condorcet allows that a class of people which
maintains itself entirely by industry is necessary to every state. Why
does he allow this? No other reason can well be assigned than that he
conceives that the labour necessary to procure subsistence for an
extended population will not be performed without the goad of
necessity. If by establishments of this kind of spur to industry be
removed, if the idle and the negligent are placed upon the same footing
with regard to their credit, and the future support of their wives and
families, as the active and industrious, can we expect to see men exert
that animated activity in bettering their condition which now forms the
master spring of public prosperity? If an inquisition were to be
established to examine the claims of each individual and to determine
whether he had or had not exerted himself to the utmost, and to grant
or refuse assistance accordingly, this would be little else than a
repetition upon a larger scale of the English poor laws and would be
completely destructive of the true principles of liberty and equality.

But independent of this great objection to these establishments, and
supposing for a moment that they would give no check to productive
industry, by far the greatest difficulty remains yet behind.

Were every man sure of a comfortable provision for his family, almost
every man would have one, and were the rising generation free from the
'killing frost' of misery, population must rapidly increase. Of this Mr
Condorcet seems to be fully aware himself, and after having described
further improvements, he says:

But in this process of industry and happiness, each generation will be
called to more extended enjoyments, and in consequence, by the physical
constitution of the human frame, to an increase in the number of
individuals. Must not there arrive a period then, when these laws,
equally necessary, shall counteract each other? When the increase of
the number of men surpassing their means of subsistence, the necessary
result must be either a continual diminution of happiness and
population, a movement truly retrograde, or, at least, a kind of
oscillation between good and evil? In societies arrived at this term,
will not this oscillation be a constantly subsisting cause of
periodical misery? Will it not mark the limit when all further
amelioration will become impossible, and point out that term to the
perfectibility of the human race which it may reach in the course of
ages, but can never pass?

He then adds,

There is no person who does not see how very distant such a period is
from us, but shall we ever arrive at it? It is equally impossible to
pronounce for or against the future realization of an event which
cannot take place but at an era when the human race will have attained
improvements, of which we can at present scarcely form a conception.

Mr Condorcet's picture of what may be expected to happen when the
number of men shall surpass the means of their subsistence is justly
drawn. The oscillation which he describes will certainly take place and
will without doubt be a constantly subsisting cause of periodical
misery. The only point in which I differ from Mr Condorcet with regard
to this picture is the period when it may be applied to the human race.
Mr Condorcet thinks that it cannot possibly be applicable but at an era
extremely distant. If the proportion between the natural increase of
population and food which I have given be in any degree near the truth,
it will appear, on the contrary, that the period when the number of men
surpass their means of subsistence has long since arrived, and that
this necessity oscillation, this constantly subsisting cause of
periodical misery, has existed ever since we have had any histories of
mankind, does exist at present, and will for ever continue to exist,
unless some decided change take place in the physical constitution of
our nature.

Mr Condorcet, however, goes on to say that should the period, which he
conceives to be so distant, ever arrive, the human race, and the
advocates for the perfectibility of man, need not be alarmed at it. He
then proceeds to remove the difficulty in a manner which I profess not
to understand. Having observed, that the ridiculous prejudices of
superstition would by that time have ceased to throw over morals a
corrupt and degrading austerity, he alludes, either to a promiscuous
concubinage, which would prevent breeding, or to something else as
unnatural. To remove the difficulty in this way will, surely, in the
opinion of most men, be to destroy that virtue and purity of manners,
which the advocates of equality, and of the perfectibility of man,
profess to be the end and object of their views.




CHAPTER 9

Mr Condorcet's conjecture concerning the organic perfectibility of man,
and the indefinite prolongation of human life--Fallacy of the argument,
which infers an unlimited progress from a partial improvement, the
limit of which cannot be ascertained, illustrated in the breeding of
animals, and the cultivation of plants.


The last question which Mr Condorcet proposes for examination is the
organic perfectibility of man. He observes that if the proofs which
have been already given and which, in their development will receive
greater force in the work itself, are sufficient to establish the
indefinite perfectibility of man upon the supposition of the same
natural faculties and the same organization which he has at present,
what will be the certainty, what the extent of our hope, if this
organization, these natural faculties themselves, are susceptible of
amelioration?

From the improvement of medicine, from the use of more wholesome food
and habitations, from a manner of living which will improve the
strength of the body by exercise without impairing it by excess, from
the destruction of the two great causes of the degradation of man,
misery, and too great riches, from the gradual removal of transmissible
and contagious disorders by the improvement of physical knowledge,
rendered more efficacious by the progress of reason and of social
order, he infers that though man will not absolutely become immortal,
yet that the duration between his birth and natural death will increase
without ceasing, will have no assignable term, and may properly be
expressed by the word 'indefinite'. He then defines this word to mean
either a constant approach to an unlimited extent, without ever
reaching it, or an increase. In the immensity of ages to an extent
greater than any assignable quantity.

But surely the application of this term in either of these senses to
the duration of human life is in the highest degree unphilosophical and
totally unwarranted by any appearances in the laws of nature.
Variations from different causes are essentially distinct from a
regular and unretrograde increase. The average duration of human life
will to a certain degree vary from healthy or unhealthy climates, from
wholesome or unwholesome food, from virtuous or vicious manners, and
other causes, but it may be fairly doubted whether there is really the
smallest perceptible advance in the natural duration of human life
since first we have had any authentic history of man. The prejudices of
all ages have indeed been directly contrary to this supposition, and
though I would not lay much stress upon these prejudices, they will in
some measure tend to prove that there has been no marked advance in an
opposite direction.

It may perhaps be said that the world is yet so young, so completely in
its infancy, that it ought not to be expected that any difference
should appear so soon.

If this be the case, there is at once an end of all human science. The
whole train of reasonings from effects to causes will be destroyed. We
may shut our eyes to the book of nature, as it will no longer be of any
use to read it. The wildest and most improbable conjectures may be
advanced with as much certainty as the most just and sublime theories,
founded on careful and reiterated experiments. We may return again to
the old mode of philosophising and make facts bend to systems, instead
of establishing systems upon facts. The grand and consistent theory of
Newton will be placed upon the same footing as the wild and eccentric
hypotheses of Descartes. In short, if the laws of nature are thus
fickle and inconstant, if it can be affirmed and be believed that they
will change, when for ages and ages they have appeared immutable, the
human mind will no longer have any incitements to inquiry, but must
remain fixed in inactive torpor, or amuse itself only in bewildering
dreams and extravagant fancies.

The constancy of the laws of nature and of effects and causes is the
foundation of all human knowledge, though far be it from me to say that
the same power which framed and executes the laws of nature may not
change them all 'in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.'  Such a
change may undoubtedly happen. All that I mean to say is that it is
impossible to infer it from reasoning. If without any previous
observable symptoms or indications of a change, we can infer that a
change will take place, we may as well make any assertion whatever and
think it as unreasonable to be contradicted in affirming that the moon
will come in contact with the earth tomorrow, as in saying that the sun
will rise at its usual time.

With regard to the duration of human life, there does not appear to
have existed from the earliest ages of the world to the present moment
the smallest permanent symptom or indication of increasing
prolongation. The observable effects of climate, habit, diet, and other
causes, on length of life have furnished the pretext for asserting its
indefinite extension; and the sandy foundation on which the argument
rests is that because the limit of human life is undefined; because you
cannot mark its precise term, and say so far exactly shall it go and no
further; that therefore its extent may increase for ever, and be
properly termed indefinite or unlimited. But the fallacy and absurdity
of this argument will sufficiently appear from a slight examination of
what Mr Condorcet calls the organic perfectibility, or degeneration, of
the race of plants and animals, which he says may be regarded as one of
the general laws of nature.

I am told that it is a maxim among the improvers of cattle that you may
breed to any degree of nicety you please, and they found this maxim
upon another, which is that some of the offspring will possess the
desirable qualities of the parents in a greater degree. In the famous
Leicestershire breed of sheep, the object is to procure them with small
heads and small legs. Proceeding upon these breeding maxims, it is
evident that we might go on till the heads and legs were evanescent
quantities, but this is so palpable an absurdity that we may be quite
sure that the premises are not just and that there really is a limit,
though we cannot see it or say exactly where it is. In this case, the
point of the greatest degree of improvement, or the smallest size of
the head and legs, may be said to be undefined, but this is very
different from unlimited, or from indefinite, in Mr Condorcet's
acceptation of the term. Though I may not be able in the present
instance to mark the limit at which further improvement will stop, I
can very easily mention a point at which it will not arrive. I should
not scruple to assert that were the breeding to continue for ever, the
head and legs of these sheep would never be so small as the head and
legs of a rat.

It cannot be true, therefore, that among animals, some of the offspring
will possess the desirable qualities of the parents in a greater
degree, or that animals are indefinitely perfectible.

The progress of a wild plant to a beautiful garden flower is perhaps
more marked and striking than anything that takes place among animals,
yet even here it would be the height of absurdity to assert that the
progress was unlimited or indefinite.

One of the most obvious features of the improvement is the increase of
size. The flower has grown gradually larger by cultivation. If the
progress were really unlimited it might be increased ad infinitum, but
this is so gross an absurdity that we may be quite sure that among
plants as well as among animals there is a limit to improvement, though
we do not exactly know where it is. It is probable that the gardeners
who contend for flower prizes have often applied stronger dressing
without success. At the same time it would be highly presumptuous in
any man to say that he had seen the finest carnation or anemone that
could ever be made to grow. He might however assert without the
smallest chance of being contradicted by a future fact, that no
carnation or anemone could ever by cultivation be increased to the size
of a large cabbage; and yet there are assignable quantities much
greater than a cabbage. No man can say that he has seen the largest ear
of wheat, or the largest oak that could ever grow; but he might easily,
and with perfect certainty, name a point of magnitude at which they
would not arrive. In all these cases therefore, a careful distinction
should be made, between an unlimited progress, and a progress where the
limit is merely undefined.

It will be said, perhaps, that the reason why plants and animals cannot
increase indefinitely in size is, that they would fall by their own
weight. I answer, how do we know this but from experience?--from
experience of the degree of strength with which these bodies are
formed. I know that a carnation, long before it reached the size of a
cabbage, would not be supported by its stalk, but I only know this from
my experience of the weakness and want of tenacity in the materials of
a carnation stalk. There are many substances in nature of the same size
that would support as large a head as a cabbage.

The reasons of the mortality of plants are at present perfectly unknown
to us. No man can say why such a plant is annual, another biennial, and
another endures for ages. The whole affair in all these cases, in
plants, animals, and in the human race, is an affair of experience, and
I only conclude that man is mortal because the invariable experience of
all ages has proved the mortality of those materials of which his
visible body is made:

What can we reason, but from what we know?

Sound philosophy will not authorize me to alter this opinion of the
mortality of man on earth, till it can be clearly proved that the human
race has made, and is making, a decided progress towards an illimitable
extent of life. And the chief reason why I adduced the two particular
instances from animals and plants was to expose and illustrate, if I
could, the fallacy of that argument which infers an unlimited progress,
merely because some partial improvement has taken place, and that the
limit of this improvement cannot be precisely ascertained.

The capacity of improvement in plants and animals, to a certain degree,
no person can possibly doubt. A clear and decided progress has already
been made, and yet, I think, it appears that it would be highly absurd
to say that this progress has no limits. In human life, though there
are great variations from different causes, it may be doubted whether,
since the world began, any organic improvement whatever in the human
frame can be clearly ascertained. The foundations, therefore, on which
the arguments for the organic perfectibility of man rest, are unusually
weak, and can only be considered as mere conjectures. It does not,
however, by any means seem impossible that by an attention to breed, a
certain degree of improvement, similar to that among animals, might
take place among men. Whether intellect could be communicated may be a
matter of doubt: but size, strength, beauty, complexion, and perhaps
even longevity are in a degree transmissible. The error does not seem
to lie in supposing a small degree of improvement possible, but in not
discriminating between a small improvement, the limit of which is
undefined, and an improvement really unlimited. As the human race,
however, could not be improved in this way, without condemning all the
bad specimens to celibacy, it is not probable that an attention to
breed should ever become general; indeed, I know of no well-directed
attempts of this kind, except in the ancient family of the
Bickerstaffs, who are said to have been very successful in whitening
the skins and increasing the height of their race by prudent marriages,
particularly by that very judicious cross with Maud, the milk-maid, by
which some capital defects in the constitutions of the family were
corrected.

It will not be necessary, I think, in order more completely to shew the
improbability of any approach in man towards immortality on earth, to
urge the very great additional weight that an increase in the duration
of life would give to the argument of population.

Many, I doubt not, will think that the attempting gravely to controvert
so absurd a paradox as the immortality of man on earth, or indeed, even
the perfectibility of man and society, is a waste of time and words,
and that such unfounded conjectures are best answered by neglect. I
profess, however, to be of a different opinion. When paradoxes of this
kind are advanced by ingenious and able men, neglect has no tendency to
convince them of their mistakes. Priding themselves on what they
conceive to be a mark of the reach and size of their own
understandings, of the extent and comprehensiveness of their views,
they will look upon this neglect merely as an indication of poverty,
and narrowness, in the mental exertions of their contemporaries, and
only think that the world is not yet prepared to receive their sublime
truths.

On the contrary, a candid investigation of these subjects, accompanied
with a perfect readiness to adopt any theory warranted by sound
philosophy, may have a tendency to convince them that in forming
improbable and unfounded hypotheses, so far from enlarging the bounds
of human science, they are contracting it, so far from promoting the
improvement of the human mind, they are obstructing it; they are
throwing us back again almost into the infancy of knowledge and
weakening the foundations of that mode of philosophising, under the
auspices of which science has of late made such rapid advances. The
present rage for wide and unrestrained speculation seems to be a kind
of mental intoxication, arising, perhaps, from the great and unexpected
discoveries which have been made of late years, in various branches of
science. To men elate and giddy with such successes, every thing
appeared to be within the grasp of human powers; and, under this
illusion, they confounded subjects where no real progress could be
proved with those where the progress had been marked, certain, and
acknowledged. Could they be persuaded to sober themselves with a little
severe and chastised thinking, they would see, that the cause of truth,
and of sound philosophy, cannot but suffer by substituting wild flights
and unsupported assertions for patient investigation, and well
authenticated proofs.

Mr Condorcet's book may be considered not only as a sketch of the
opinions of a celebrated individual, but of many of the literary men in
France at the beginning of the Revolution. As such, though merely a
sketch, it seems worthy of attention.




CHAPTER 10

Mr Godwin's system of equality--Error of attributing all the vices of
mankind to human institutions--Mr Godwin's first answer to the
difficulty arising from population totally insufficient--Mr Godwin's
beautiful system of equality supposed to be realized--Its utter
destruction simply from the principle of population in so short a time
as thirty years.


In reading Mr Godwin's ingenious and able work on political justice, it
is impossible not to be struck with the spirit and energy of his style,
the force and precision of some of his reasonings, the ardent tone of
his thoughts, and particularly with that impressive earnestness of
manner which gives an air of truth to the whole. At the same time, it
must be confessed that he has not proceeded in his inquiries with the
caution that sound philosophy seems to require. His conclusions are
often unwarranted by his premises. He fails sometimes in removing the
objections which he himself brings forward. He relies too much on
general and abstract propositions which will not admit of application.
And his conjectures certainly far outstrip the modesty of nature.

The system of equality which Mr Godwin proposes is, without doubt, by
far the most beautiful and engaging of any that has yet appeared. An
amelioration of society to be produced merely by reason and conviction
wears much more the promise of permanence than any change effected and
maintained by force. The unlimited exercise of private judgement is a
doctrine inexpressibly grand and captivating and has a vast superiority
over those systems where every individual is in a manner the slave of
the public. The substitution of benevolence as the master-spring and
moving principle of society, instead of self-love, is a consummation
devoutly to be wished. In short, it is impossible to contemplate the
whole of this fair structure without emotions of delight and
admiration, accompanied with ardent longing for the period of its
accomplishment. But, alas! that moment can never arrive. The whole is
little better than a dream, a beautiful phantom of the imagination.
These 'gorgeous palaces' of happiness and immortality, these 'solemn
temples' of truth and virtue will dissolve, 'like the baseless fabric
of a vision', when we awaken to real life and contemplate the true and
genuine situation of man on earth. Mr Godwin, at the conclusion of the
third chapter of his eighth book, speaking of population, says:

There is a principle in human society, by which population is
perpetually kept down to the level of the means of subsistence. Thus
among the wandering tribes of America and Asia, we never find through
the lapse of ages that population has so increased as to render
necessary the cultivation of the earth.

This principle, which Mr Godwin thus mentions as some mysterious and
occult cause and which he does not attempt to investigate, will be
found to be the grinding law of necessity, misery, and the fear of
misery.

The great error under which Mr Godwin labours throughout his whole work
is the attributing almost all the vices and misery that are seen in
civil society to human institutions. Political regulations and the
established administration of property are with him the fruitful
sources of all evil, the hotbeds of all the crimes that degrade
mankind. Were this really a true state of the case, it would not seem a
hopeless task to remove evil completely from the world, and reason
seems to be the proper and adequate instrument for effecting so great a
purpose. But the truth is, that though human institutions appear to be
the obvious and obtrusive causes of much mischief to mankind, yet in
reality they are light and superficial, they are mere feathers that
float on the surface, in comparison with those deeper seated causes of
impurity that corrupt the springs and render turbid the whole stream of
human life.

Mr Godwin, in his chapter on the benefits attendant on a system of
equality, says:

The spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility, and the spirit of
fraud, these are the immediate growth of the established administration
of property. They are alike hostile to intellectual improvement. The
other vices of envy, malice, and revenge are their inseparable
companions. In a state of society where men lived in the midst of
plenty and where all shared alike the bounties of nature, these
sentiments would inevitably expire. The narrow principle of selfishness
would vanish. No man being obliged to guard his little store or provide
with anxiety and pain for his restless wants, each would lose his
individual existence in the thought of the general good. No man would
be an enemy to his neighbour, for they would have no subject of
contention, and, of consequence, philanthropy would resume the empire
which reason assigns her. Mind would be delivered from her perpetual
anxiety about corporal support, and free to expatiate in the field of
thought, which is congenial to her. Each would assist the inquiries of
all.

This would, indeed, be a happy state. But that it is merely an
imaginary picture, with scarcely a feature near the truth, the reader,
I am afraid, is already too well convinced.

Man cannot live in the midst of plenty. All cannot share alike the
bounties of nature. Were there no established administration of
property, every man would be obliged to guard with force his little
store. Selfishness would be triumphant. The subjects of contention
would be perpetual. Every individual mind would be under a constant
anxiety about corporal support, and not a single intellect would be
left free to expatiate in the field of thought.

How little Mr Godwin has turned the attention of his penetrating mind
to the real state of man on earth will sufficiently appear from the
manner in which he endeavours to remove the difficulty of an
overcharged population. He says:

The obvious answer to this objection, is, that to reason thus is to
foresee difficulties at a great distance. Three fourths of the
habitable globe is now uncultivated. The parts already cultivated are
capable of immeasurable improvement. Myriads of centuries of still
increasing population may pass away, and the earth be still found
sufficient for the subsistence of its inhabitants.

I have already pointed out the error of supposing that no distress and
difficulty would arise from an overcharged population before the earth
absolutely refused to produce any more. But let us imagine for a moment
Mr Godwin's beautiful system of equality realized in its utmost purity,
and see how soon this difficulty might be expected to press under so
perfect a form of society. A theory that will not admit of application
cannot possibly be just.

Let us suppose all the causes of misery and vice in this island
removed. War and contention cease. Unwholesome trades and manufactories
do not exist. Crowds no longer collect together in great and pestilent
cities for purposes of court intrigue, of commerce, and vicious
gratifications. Simple, healthy, and rational amusements take place of
drinking, gaming, and debauchery. There are no towns sufficiently large
to have any prejudicial effects on the human constitution. The greater
part of the happy inhabitants of this terrestrial paradise live in
hamlets and farmhouses scattered over the face of the country. Every
house is clean, airy, sufficiently roomy, and in a healthy situation.
All men are equal. The labours of luxury are at end. And the necessary
labours of agriculture are shared amicably among all. The number of
persons, and the produce of the island, we suppose to be the same as at
present. The spirit of benevolence, guided by impartial justice, will
divide this produce among all the members of the society according to
their wants. Though it would be impossible that they should all have
animal food every day, yet vegetable food, with meat occasionally,
would satisfy the desires of a frugal people and would be sufficient to
preserve them in health, strength, and spirits.

Mr Godwin considers marriage as a fraud and a monopoly. Let us suppose
the commerce of the sexes established upon principles of the most
perfect freedom. Mr Godwin does not think himself that this freedom
would lead to a promiscuous intercourse, and in this I perfectly agree
with him. The love of variety is a vicious, corrupt, and unnatural
taste and could not prevail in any great degree in a simple and
virtuous state of society. Each man would probably select himself a
partner, to whom he would adhere as long as that adherence continued to
be the choice of both parties. It would be of little consequence,
according to Mr Godwin, how many children a woman had or to whom they
belonged. Provisions and assistance would spontaneously flow from the
quarter in which they abounded, to the quarter that was deficient. (See
Bk VIII, ch. 8; in the third edition, Vol II, p. 512) And every man
would be ready to furnish instruction to the rising generation
according to his capacity.

I cannot conceive a form of society so favourable upon the whole to
population. The irremediableness of marriage, as it is at present
constituted, undoubtedly deters many from entering into that state. An
unshackled intercourse on the contrary would be a most powerful
incitement to early attachments, and as we are supposing no anxiety
about the future support of children to exist, I do not conceive that
there would be one woman in a hundred, of twenty-three, without a
family.

With these extraordinary encouragements to population, and every cause
of depopulation, as we have supposed, removed, the numbers would
necessarily increase faster than in any society that has ever yet been
known. I have mentioned, on the authority of a pamphlet published by a
Dr Styles and referred to by Dr Price, that the inhabitants of the back
settlements of America doubled their numbers in fifteen years. England
is certainly a more healthy country than the back settlements of
America, and as we have supposed every house in the island to be airy
and wholesome, and the encouragements to have a family greater even
than with the back settlers, no probable reason can be assigned why the
population should not double itself in less, if possible, than fifteen
years. But to be quite sure that we do not go beyond the truth, we will
only suppose the period of doubling to be twenty-five years, a ratio of
increase which is well known to have taken place throughout all the
Northern States of America.

There can be little doubt that the equalization of property which we
have supposed, added to the circumstance of the labour of the whole
community being directed chiefly to agriculture, would tend greatly to
augment the produce of the country. But to answer the demands of a
population increasing so rapidly, Mr Godwin's calculation of half an
hour a day for each man would certainly not be sufficient. It is
probable that the half of every man's time must be employed for this
purpose. Yet with such, or much greater exertions, a person who is
acquainted with the nature of the soil in this country, and who
reflects on the fertility of the lands already in cultivation, and the
barrenness of those that are not cultivated, will be very much disposed
to doubt whether the whole average produce could possibly be doubled in
twenty-five years from the present period. The only chance of success
would be the ploughing up all the grazing countries and putting an end
almost entirely to the use of animal food. Yet a part of this scheme
might defeat itself. The soil of England will not produce much without
dressing, and cattle seem to be necessary to make that species of
manure which best suits the land. In China it is said that the soil in
some of the provinces is so fertile as to produce two crops of rice in
the year without dressing. None of the lands in England will answer to
this description.

Difficult, however, as it might be to double the average produce of the
island in twenty-five years, let us suppose it effected. At the
expiration of the first period therefore, the food, though almost
entirely vegetable, would be sufficient to support in health the
doubled population of fourteen millions.

During the next period of doubling, where will the food be found to
satisfy the importunate demands of the increasing numbers? Where is the
fresh land to turn up? Where is the dressing necessary to improve that
which is already in cultivation? There is no person with the smallest
knowledge of land but would say that it was impossible that the average
produce of the country could be increased during the second twenty-five
years by a quantity equal to what it at present yields. Yet we will
suppose this increase, however improbable, to take place. The exuberant
strength of the argument allows of almost any concession. Even with
this concession, however, there would be seven millions at the
expiration of the second term unprovided for. A quantity of food equal
to the frugal support of twenty-one millions, would be to be divided
among twenty-eight millions.

Alas! what becomes of the picture where men lived in the midst of
plenty, where no man was obliged to provide with anxiety and pain for
his restless wants, where the narrow principle of selfishness did not
exist, where Mind was delivered from her perpetual anxiety about
corporal support and free to expatiate in the field of thought which is
congenial to her. This beautiful fabric of imagination vanishes at the
severe touch of truth. The spirit of benevolence, cherished and
invigorated by plenty, is repressed by the chilling breath of want. The
hateful passions that had vanished reappear. The mighty law of
self-preservation expels all the softer and more exalted emotions of
the soul. The temptations to evil are too strong for human nature to
resist. The corn is plucked before it is ripe, or secreted in unfair
proportions, and the whole black train of vices that belong to
falsehood are immediately generated. Provisions no longer flow in for
the support of the mother with a large family. The children are sickly
from insufficient food. The rosy flush of health gives place to the
pallid cheek and hollow eye of misery. Benevolence, yet lingering in a
few bosoms, makes some faint expiring struggles, till at length
self-love resumes his wonted empire and lords it triumphant over the
world.

No human institutions here existed, to the perverseness of which Mr
Godwin ascribes the original sin of the worst men. (Bk VIII, ch. 3; in
the third edition, Vol. II, p. 462) No opposition had been produced by
them between public and private good. No monopoly had been created of
those advantages which reason directs to be left in common. No man had
been goaded to the breach of order by unjust laws. Benevolence had
established her reign in all hearts: and yet in so short a period as
within fifty years, violence, oppression, falsehood, misery, every
hateful vice, and every form of distress, which degrade and sadden the
present state of society, seem to have been generated by the most
imperious circumstances, by laws inherent in the nature of man, and
absolutely independent of it human regulations.

If we are not yet too well convinced of the reality of this melancholy
picture, let us but look for a moment into the next period of
twenty-five years; and we shall see twenty-eight millions of human
beings without the means of support; and before the conclusion of the
first century, the population would be one hundred and twelve millions,
and the food only sufficient for thirty-five millions, leaving
seventy-seven millions unprovided for. In these ages want would be
indeed triumphant, and rapine and murder must reign at large: and yet
all this time we are supposing the produce of the earth absolutely
unlimited, and the yearly increase greater than the boldest speculator
can imagine.

This is undoubtedly a very different view of the difficulty arising
from population from that which Mr Godwin gives, when he says, 'Myriads
of centuries of still increasing population may pass away, and the
earth be still found sufficient for the subsistence of its inhabitants.'

I am sufficiently aware that the redundant twenty-eight millions, or
seventy-seven millions, that I have mentioned, could never have
existed. It is a perfectly just observation of Mr Godwin, that, 'There
is a principle in human society, by which population is perpetually
kept down to the level of the means of subsistence.' The sole question
is, what is this principle? is it some obscure and occult cause? Is it
some mysterious interference of heaven which, at a certain period,
strikes the men with impotence, and the women with barrenness? Or is it
a cause, open to our researches, within our view, a cause, which has
constantly been observed to operate, though with varied force, in every
state in which man has been placed? Is it not a degree of misery, the
necessary and inevitable result of the laws of nature, which human
institutions, so far from aggravating, have tended considerably to
mitigate, though they never can remove?

It may be curious to observe, in the case that we have been supposing,
how some of the laws which at present govern civilized society, would
be successively dictated by the most imperious necessity. As man,
according to Mr Godwin, is the creature of the impressions to which he
is subject, the goadings of want could not continue long, before some
violations of public or private stock would necessarily take place. As
these violations increased in number and extent, the more active and
comprehensive intellects of the society would soon perceive, that while
population was fast increasing, the yearly produce of the country would
shortly begin to diminish. The urgency of the case would suggest the
necessity of some mediate measures to be taken for the general safety.
Some kind of convention would then be called, and the dangerous
situation of the country stated in the strongest terms. It would be
observed, that while they lived in the midst of plenty, it was of
little consequence who laboured the least, or who possessed the least,
as every man was perfectly willing and ready to supply the wants of his
neighbour. But that the question was no longer whether one man should
give to another that which he did not use himself, but whether he
should give to his neighbour the food which was absolutely necessary to
his own existence. It would be represented, that the number of those
that were in want very greatly exceeded the number and means of those
who should supply them; that these pressing wants, which from the state
of the produce of the country could not all be gratified, had
occasioned some flagrant violations of justice; that these violations
had already checked the increase of food, and would, if they were not
by some means or other prevented, throw the whole community in
confusion; that imperious necessity seemed to dictate that a yearly
increase of produce should, if possible, be obtained at all events;
that in order to effect this first, great, and indispensable purpose,
it would be advisable to make a more complete division of land, and to
secure every man's stock against violation by the most powerful
sanctions, even by death itself.

It might be urged perhaps by some objectors that, as the fertility of
the land increased, and various accidents occurred, the share of some
men might be much more than sufficient for their support, and that when
the reign of self-love was once established, they would not distribute
their surplus produce without some compensation in return. It would be
observed, in answer, that this was an inconvenience greatly to be
lamented; but that it was an evil which bore no comparison to the black
train of distresses that would inevitably be occasioned by the
insecurity of property; that the quantity of food which one man could
consume was necessarily limited by the narrow capacity of the human
stomach; that it was not certainly probable that he should throw away
the rest; but that even if he exchanged his surplus food for the labour
of others, and made them in some degree dependent on him, this would
still be better than that these others should absolutely starve.

It seems highly probable, therefore, that an administration of
property, not very different from that which prevails in civilized
states at present, would be established, as the best, though
inadequate, remedy for the evils which were pressing on the society.

The next subject that would come under discussion, intimately connected
with the preceding, is the commerce between the sexes. It would be
urged by those who had turned their attention to the true cause of the
difficulties under which the community laboured, that while every man
felt secure that all his children would be well provided for by general
benevolence, the powers of the earth would be absolutely inadequate to
produce food for the population which would inevitably ensue; that even
if the whole attention and labour of the society were directed to this
sole point, and if, by the most perfect security of property, and every
other encouragement that could be thought of, the greatest possible
increase of produce were yearly obtained; yet still, that the increase
of food would by no means keep pace with the much more rapid increase
of population; that some check to population therefore was imperiously
called for; that the most natural and obvious check seemed to be to
make every man provide for his own children; that this would operate in
some respect as a measure and guide in the increase of population, as
it might be expected that no man would bring beings into the world, for
whom he could not find the means of support; that where this
notwithstanding was the case, it seemed necessary, for the example of
others, that the disgrace and inconvenience attending such a conduct
should fall upon the individual, who had thus inconsiderately plunged
himself and innocent children in misery and want.

The institution of marriage, or at least, of some express or implied
obligation on every man to support his own children, seems to be the
natural result of these reasonings in a community under the
difficulties that we have supposed.

The view of these difficulties presents us with a very natural origin
of the superior disgrace which attends a breach of chastity in the
woman than in the man. It could not be expected that women should have
resources sufficient to support their own children. When therefore a
woman was connected with a man, who had entered into no compact to
maintain her children, and, aware of the inconveniences that he might
bring upon himself, had deserted her, these children must necessarily
fall for support upon the society, or starve. And to prevent the
frequent recurrence of such an inconvenience, as it would be highly
unjust to punish so natural a fault by personal restraint or
infliction, the men might agree to punish it with disgrace. The offence
is besides more obvious and conspicuous in the woman, and less liable
to any mistake. The father of a child may not always be known, but the
same uncertainty cannot easily exist with regard to the mother. Where
the evidence of the offence was most complete, and the inconvenience to
the society at the same time the greatest, there it was agreed that the
large share of blame should fall. The obligation on every man to
maintain his children, the society would enforce, if there were
occasion; and the greater degree of inconvenience or labour, to which a
family would necessarily subject him, added to some portion of disgrace
which every human being must incur who leads another into unhappiness,
might be considered as a sufficient punishment for the man.

That a woman should at present be almost driven from society for an
offence which men commit nearly with impunity, seems to be undoubtedly
a breach of natural justice. But the origin of the custom, as the most
obvious and effectual method of preventing the frequent recurrence of a
serious inconvenience to a community, appears to be natural, though not
perhaps perfectly justifiable. This origin, however, is now lost in the
new train of ideas which the custom has since generated. What at first
might be dictated by state necessity is now supported by female
delicacy, and operates with the greatest force on that part of society
where, if the original intention of the custom were preserved, there is
the least real occasion for it.

When these two fundamental laws of society, the security of property,
and the institution of marriage, were once established, inequality of
conditions must necessarily follow. Those who were born after the
division of property would come into a world already possessed. If
their parents, from having too large a family, could not give them
sufficient for their support, what are they to do in a world where
everything is appropriated? We have seen the fatal effects that would
result to a society, if every man had a valid claim to an equal share
of the produce of the earth. The members of a family which was grown
too large for the original division of land appropriated to it could
not then demand a part of the surplus produce of others, as a debt of
justice. It has appeared, that from the inevitable laws of our nature
some human beings must suffer from want. These are the unhappy persons
who, in the great lottery of life, have drawn a blank. The number of
these claimants would soon exceed the ability of the surplus produce to
supply. Moral merit is a very difficult distinguishing criterion,
except in extreme cases. The owners of surplus produce would in general
seek some more obvious mark of distinction. And it seems both natural
and just that, except upon particular occasions, their choice should
fall upon those who were able, and professed themselves willing, to
exert their strength in procuring a further surplus produce; and thus
at once benefiting the community, and enabling these proprietors to
afford assistance to greater numbers. All who were in want of food
would be urged by imperious necessity to offer their labour in exchange
for this article so absolutely essential to existence. The fund
appropriated to the maintenance of labour would be the aggregate
quantity of food possessed by the owners of land beyond their own
consumption. When the demands upon this fund were great and numerous,
it would naturally be divided in very small shares. Labour would be ill
paid. Men would offer to work for a bare subsistence, and the rearing
of families would be checked by sickness and misery. On the contrary,
when this fund was increasing fast, when it was great in proportion to
the number of claimants, it would be divided in much larger shares. No
man would exchange his labour without receiving an ample quantity of
food in return. Labourers would live in ease and comfort, and would
consequently be able to rear a numerous and vigorous offspring.

On the state of this fund, the happiness, or the degree of misery,
prevailing among the lower classes of people in every known state at
present chiefly depends. And on this happiness, or degree of misery,
depends the increase, stationariness, or decrease of population.

And thus it appears, that a society constituted according to the most
beautiful form that imagination can conceive, with benevolence for its
moving principle, instead of self-love, and with every evil disposition
in all its members corrected by reason and not force, would, from the
inevitable laws of nature, and not from any original depravity of man,
in a very short period degenerate into a society constructed upon a
plan not essentially different from that which prevails in every known
state at present; I mean, a society divided into a class of
proprietors, and a class of labourers, and with self-love the
main-spring of the great machine.

In the supposition I have made, I have undoubtedly taken the increase
of population smaller, and the increase of produce greater, than they
really would be. No reason can be assigned why, under the circumstances
I have supposed, population should not increase faster than in any
known instance. If then we were to take the period of doubling at
fifteen years, instead of twenty-five years, and reflect upon the
labour necessary to double the produce in so short a time, even if we
allow it possible, we may venture to pronounce with certainty that if
Mr Godwin's system of society was established in its utmost perfection,
instead of myriads of centuries, not thirty years could elapse before
its utter destruction from the simple principle of population.

I have taken no notice of emigration for obvious reasons. If such
societies were instituted in other parts of Europe, these countries
would be under the same difficulties with regard to population, and
could admit no fresh members into their bosoms. If this beautiful
society were confined to this island, it must have degenerated
strangely from its original purity, and administer but a very small
portion of the happiness it proposed; in short, its essential principle
must be completely destroyed, before any of its members would
voluntarily consent to leave it, and live under such governments as at
present exist in Europe, or submit to the extreme hardships of first
settlers in new regions. We well know, from repeated experience, how
much misery and hardship men will undergo in their own country, before
they can determine to desert it; and how often the most tempting
proposals of embarking for new settlements have been rejected by people
who appeared to be almost starving.




CHAPTER 11

Mr Godwin's conjecture concerning the future extinction of the passion
between the sexes--Little apparent grounds for such a
conjecture--Passion of love not inconsistent either with reason or
virtue.


We have supported Mr Godwin's system of society once completely
established. But it is supposing an impossibility. The same causes in
nature which would destroy it so rapidly, were it once established,
would prevent the possibility of its establishment. And upon what
grounds we can presume a change in these natural causes, I am utterly
at a loss to conjecture. No move towards the extinction of the passion
between the sexes has taken place in the five or six thousand years
that the world has existed. Men in the decline of life have in all ages
declaimed against a passion which they have ceased to feel, but with as
little reason as success. Those who from coldness of constitutional
temperament have never felt what love is, will surely be allowed to be
very incompetent judges with regard to the power of this passion to
contribute to the sum of pleasurable sensations in life. Those who have
spent their youth in criminal excesses and have prepared for
themselves, as the comforts of their age, corporeal debility and mental
remorse may well inveigh against such pleasures as vain and futile, and
unproductive of lasting satisfaction. But the pleasures of pure love
will bear the contemplation of the most improved reason, and the most
exalted virtue. Perhaps there is scarcely a man who has once
experienced the genuine delight of virtuous love, however great his
intellectual pleasure may have been, that does not look back to the
period as the sunny spot in his whole life, where his imagination loves
to bask, which he recollects and contemplates with the fondest regrets,
and which he would most wish to live over again. The superiority of
intellectual to sensual pleasures consists rather in their filling up
more time, in their having a larger range, and in their being less
liable to satiety, than in their being more real and essential.

Intemperance in every enjoyment defeats its own purpose. A walk in the
finest day through the most beautiful country, if pursued too far, ends
in pain and fatigue. The most wholesome and invigorating food, eaten
with an unrestrained appetite, produces weakness instead of strength.
Even intellectual pleasures, though certainly less liable than others
to satiety, pursued with too little intermission, debilitate the body,
and impair the vigour of the mind. To argue against the reality of
these pleasures from their abuse seems to be hardly just. Morality,
according to Mr Godwin, is a calculation of consequences, or, as
Archdeacon Paley very justly expresses it, the will of God, as
collected from general expediency. According to either of these
definitions, a sensual pleasure not attended with the probability of
unhappy consequences does not offend against the laws of morality, and
if it be pursued with such a degree of temperance as to leave the most
ample room for intellectual attainments, it must undoubtedly add to the
sum of pleasurable sensations in life. Virtuous love, exalted by
friendship, seems to be that sort of mixture of sensual and
intellectual enjoyment particularly suited to the nature of man, and
most powerfully calculated to awaken the sympathies of the soul, and
produce the most exquisite gratifications.

Mr Godwin says, in order to shew the evident inferiority of the
pleasures of sense, 'Strip the commerce of the sexes of all its
attendant circumstances, and it would be generally despised' (Bk. I,
ch. 5; in the third edition, Vol. I, pp. 71-72). He might as well say
to a man who admired trees: strip them of their spreading branches and
lovely foliage, and what beauty can you see in a bare pole? But it was
the tree with the branches and foliage, and not without them, that
excited admiration. One feature of an object may be as distinct, and
excite as different emotions, from the aggregate as any two things the
most remote, as a beautiful woman, and a map of Madagascar. It is 'the
symmetry of person, the vivacity, the voluptuous softness of temper,
the affectionate kindness of feelings, the imagination and the wit' of
a woman that excite the passion of love, and not the mere distinction
of her being female. Urged by the passion of love, men have been driven
into acts highly prejudicial to the general interests of society, but
probably they would have found no difficulty in resisting the
temptation, had it appeared in the form of a woman with no other
attractions whatever but her sex. To strip sensual pleasures of all
their adjuncts, in order to prove their inferiority, is to deprive a
magnet of some of its most essential causes of attraction, and then to
say that it is weak and inefficient.

In the pursuit of every enjoyment, whether sensual or intellectual,
reason, that faculty which enables us to calculate consequences, is the
proper corrective and guide. It is probable therefore that improved
reason will always tend to prevent the abuse of sensual pleasures,
though it by no means follows that it will extinguish them.

I have endeavoured to expose the fallacy of that argument which infers
an unlimited progress from a partial improvement, the limits of which
cannot be exactly ascertained. It has appeared, I think, that there are
many instances in which a decided progress has been observed, where yet
it would be a gross absurdity to suppose that progress indefinite. But
towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes, no observable
progress whatever has hitherto been made. To suppose such an
extinction, therefore, is merely to offer an unfounded conjecture,
unsupported by any philosophical probabilities.

It is a truth, which history I am afraid makes too clear, that some men
of the highest mental powers have been addicted not only to a moderate,
but even to an immoderate indulgence in the pleasures of sensual love.
But allowing, as I should be inclined to do, notwithstanding numerous
instances to the contrary, that great intellectual exertions tend to
diminish the empire of this passion over man, it is evident that the
mass of mankind must be improved more highly than the brightest
ornaments of the species at present before any difference can take
place sufficient sensibly to affect population. I would by no means
suppose that the mass of mankind has reached its term of improvement,
but the principal argument of this essay tends to place in a strong
point of view the improbability that the lower classes of people in any
country should ever be sufficiently free from want and labour to obtain
any high degree of intellectual improvement.




CHAPTER 12

Mr Godwin's conjecture concerning the indefinite prolongation of human
life--Improper inference drawn from the effects of mental stimulants on
the human frame, illustrated in various instances--Conjectures not
founded on any indications in the past not to be considered as
philosophical conjectures--Mr Godwin's and Mr Condorcet's conjecture
respecting the approach of man towards immortality on earth, a curious
instance of the inconsistency of scepticism.


Mr Godwin's conjecture respecting the future approach of man towards
immortality on earth seems to be rather oddly placed in a chapter which
professes to remove the objection to his system of equality from the
principle of population. Unless he supposes the passion between the
sexes to decrease faster than the duration of life increases, the earth
would be more encumbered than ever. But leaving this difficulty to Mr
Godwin, let us examine a few of the appearances from which the probable
immortality of man is inferred.

To prove the power of the mind over the body, Mr Godwin observes, "How
often do we find a piece of good news dissipating a distemper? How
common is the remark that those accidents which are to the indolent a
source of disease are forgotten and extirpated in the busy and active?
I walk twenty miles in an indolent and half determined temper and am
extremely fatigued. I walk twenty miles full of ardour, and with a
motive that engrosses my soul, and I come in as fresh and as alert as
when I began my journey. Emotion excited by some unexpected word, by a
letter that is delivered to us, occasions the most extraordinary
revolutions in our frame, accelerates the circulation, causes the heart
to palpitate, the tongue to refuse its office, and has been known to
occasion death by extreme anguish or extreme joy. There is nothing
indeed of which the physician is more aware than of the power of the
mind in assisting or reading convalescence."

The instances here mentioned are chiefly instances of the effects of
mental stimulants on the bodily frame. No person has ever for a moment
doubted the near, though mysterious, connection of mind and body. But
it is arguing totally without knowledge of the nature of stimulants to
suppose, either that they can be applied continually with equal
strength, or if they could be so applied, for a time, that they would
not exhaust and wear out the subject. In some of the cases here
noticed, the strength of the stimulus depends upon its novelty and
unexpectedness. Such a stimulus cannot, from its nature, be repeated
often with the same effect, as it would by repetition lose that
property which gives it its strength.

In the other cases, the argument is from a small and partial effect, to
a great and general effect, which will in numberless instances be found
to be a very fallacious mode of reasoning. The busy and active man may
in some degree counteract, or what is perhaps nearer the truth, may
disregard those slight disorders of frame which fix the attention of a
man who has nothing else to think of; but this does not tend to prove
that activity of mind will enable a man to disregard a high fever, the
smallpox, or the plague.

The man who walks twenty miles with a motive that engrosses his soul
does not attend to his slight fatigue of body when he comes in; but
double his motive, and set him to walk another twenty miles, quadruple
it, and let him start a third time, and so on; and the length of his
walk will ultimately depend upon muscle and not mind. Powell, for a
motive of ten guineas, would have walked further probably than Mr
Godwin, for a motive of half a million. A motive of uncommon power
acting upon a frame of moderate strength would, perhaps, make the man
kill himself by his exertions, but it would not make him walk a hundred
miles in twenty-four hours. This statement of the case shews the
fallacy of supposing that the person was really not at all tired in his
first walk of twenty miles, because he did not appear to be so, or,
perhaps, scarcely felt any fatigue himself. The mind cannot fix its
attention strongly on more than one object at once. The twenty thousand
pounds so engrossed his thoughts that he did not attend to any slight
soreness of foot, or stiffness of limb. But had he been really as fresh
and as alert, as when he first set off, he would be able to go the
second twenty miles with as much ease as the first, and so on, the
third, &c. Which leads to a palpable absurdity. When a horse of spirit
is nearly half tired, by the stimulus of the spur, added to the proper
management of the bit, he may be put so much upon his mettle, that he
would appear to a standerby, as fresh and as high spirited as if he had
not gone a mile. Nay, probably, the horse himself, while in the heat
and passion occasioned by this stimulus, would not feel any fatigue;
but it would be strangely contrary to all reason and experience, to
argue from such an appearance that, if the stimulus were continued, the
horse would never be tired. The cry of a pack of hounds will make some
horses, after a journey of forty miles on the road, appear as fresh,
and as lively, as when they first set out. Were they then to be hunted,
no perceptible abatement would at first be felt by their riders in
their strength and spirits, but towards the end of a hard day, the
previous fatigue would have its full weight and effect, and make them
tire sooner. When I have taken a long walk with my gun, and met with no
success, I have frequently returned home feeling a considerable degree
of uncomfortableness from fatigue. Another day, perhaps, going over
nearly the same extent of ground with a good deal of sport, I have come
home fresh, and alert. The difference in the sensation of fatigue upon
coming in, on the different days, may have been very striking, but on
the following mornings I have found no such difference. I have not
perceived that I was less stiff in my limbs, or less footsore, on the
morning after the day of the sport, than on the other morning.

In all these cases, stimulants upon the mind seem to act rather by
taking off the attention from the bodily fatigue, than by really and
truly counteracting it. If the energy of my mind had really
counteracted the fatigue of my body, why should I feel tired the next
morning? if the stimulus of the hounds had as completely overcome the
fatigue of the journey in reality, as it did in appearance, why should
the horse be tired sooner than if he had not gone the forty miles? I
happen to have a very bad fit of the toothache at the time I am writing
this. In the eagerness of composition, I every now and then, for a
moment or two, forget it. Yet I cannot help thinking that the process,
which causes the pain, is still going forwards, and that the nerves
which carry the information of it to the brain are even during these
moments demanding attention and room for their appropriate vibrations.
The multiplicity of vibrations of another kind may perhaps prevent
their admission, or overcome them for a time when admitted, till a
shoot of extraordinary energy puts all other vibration to the rout,
destroys the vividness of my argumentative conceptions, and rides
triumphant in the brain. In this case, as in the others, the mind seems
to have little or no power in counteracting or curing the disorder, but
merely possesses a power, if strongly excited, of fixing its attention
on other subjects.

I do not, however, mean to say that a sound and vigorous mind has no
tendency whatever to keep the body in a similar state. So close and
intimate is the union of mind and body that it would be highly
extraordinary if they did not mutually assist each other's functions.
But, perhaps, upon a comparison, the body has more effect upon the mind
than the mind upon the body. The first object of the mind is to act as
purveyor to the wants of the body. When these wants are completely
satisfied, an active mind is indeed apt to wander further, to range
over the fields of science, or sport in the regions of. Imagination, to
fancy that it has 'shuffled off this mortal coil', and is seeking its
kindred element. But all these efforts are like the vain exertions of
the hare in the fable. The slowly moving tortoise, the body, never
fails to overtake the mind, however widely and extensively it may have
ranged, and the brightest and most energetic intellects, unwillingly as
they may attend to the first or second summons, must ultimately yield
the empire of the brain to the calls of hunger, or sink with the
exhausted body in sleep.

It seems as if one might say with certainty that if a medicine could be
found to immortalize the body there would be no fear of its [not] being
accompanied by the immortality of the mind. But the immortality of the
mind by no means seems to infer the immortality of the body. On the
contrary, the greatest conceivable energy of mind would probably
exhaust and destroy the strength of the body. A temperate vigour of
mind appears to be favourable to health, but very great intellectual
exertions tend rather, as has been often observed, to wear out the
scabbard. Most of the instances which Mr Godwin has brought to prove
the power of the mind over the body, and the consequent probability of
the immortality of man, are of this latter description, and could such
stimulants be continually applied, instead of tending to immortalize,
they would tend very rapidly to destroy the human frame.

The probable increase of the voluntary power of man over his animal
frame comes next under Mr Godwin's consideration, and he concludes by
saying, that the voluntary power of some men, in this respect, is found
to extend to various articles in which other men are impotent. But this
is reasoning against an almost universal rule from a few exceptions;
and these exceptions seem to be rather tricks, than powers that may be
exerted to any good purpose. I have never heard of any man who could
regulate his pulse in a fever, and doubt much, if any of the persons
here alluded to have made the smallest perceptible progress in the
regular correction of the disorders of their frames and the consequent
prolongation of their lives.

Mr Godwin says, 'Nothing can be more unphilosophical than to conclude,
that, because a certain species of power is beyond the train of our
present observation, that it is beyond the limits of the human mind.' I
own my ideas of philosophy are in this respect widely different from Mr
Godwin's. The only distinction that I see, between a philosophical
conjecture, and the assertions of the Prophet Mr Brothers, is, that one
is founded upon indications arising from the train of our present
observations, and the other has no foundation at all. I expect that
great discoveries are yet to take place in all the branches of human
science, particularly in physics; but the moment we leave past
experience as the foundation of our conjectures concerning the future,
and, still more, if our conjectures absolutely contradict past
experience, we are thrown upon a wide field of uncertainty, and any one
supposition is then just as good as another. If a person were to tell
me that men would ultimately have eyes and hands behind them as well as
before them, I should admit the usefulness of the addition, but should
give as a reason for my disbelief of it, that I saw no indications
whatever in the past from which I could infer the smallest probability
of such a change. If this be not allowed a valid objection, all
conjectures are alike, and all equally philosophical. I own it appears
to me that in the train of our present observations, there are no more
genuine indications that man will become immortal upon earth than that
he will have four eyes and four hands, or that trees will grow
horizontally instead of perpendicularly.

It will be said, perhaps, that many discoveries have already taken
place in the world that were totally unforeseen and unexpected. This I
grant to be true; but if a person had predicted these discoveries
without being guided by any analogies or indications from past facts,
he would deserve the name of seer or prophet, but not of philosopher.
The wonder that some of our modern discoveries would excite in the
savage inhabitants of Europe in the times of Theseus and Achilles,
proves but little. Persons almost entirely unacquainted with the powers
of a machine cannot be expected to guess at its effects. I am far from
saying, that we are at present by any means fully acquainted with the
powers of the human mind; but we certainly know more of this instrument
than was known four thousand years ago; and therefore, though not to be
called competent judges, we are certainly much better able than savages
to say what is, or is not, within its grasp. A watch would strike a
savage with as much surprise as a perpetual motion; yet one is to us a
most familiar piece of mechanism, and the other has constantly eluded
the efforts of the most acute intellects. In many instances we are now
able to perceive the causes, which prevent an unlimited improvement in
those inventions, which seemed to promise fairly for it at first. The
original improvers of telescopes would probably think, that as long as
the size of the specula and the length of the tubes could be increased,
the powers and advantages of the instrument would increase; but
experience has since taught us, that the smallness of the field, the
deficiency of light, and the circumstance of the atmosphere being
magnified, prevent the beneficial results that were to be expected from
telescopes of extraordinary size and power. In many parts of knowledge,
man has been almost constantly making some progress; in other parts,
his efforts have been invariably baffled. The savage would not probably
be able to guess at the causes of this mighty difference. Our further
experience has given us some little insight into these causes, and has
therefore enabled us better to judge, if not of what we are to expect
in future, at least of what we are not to expect, which, though
negative, is a very useful piece of information.

As the necessity of sleep seems rather to depend upon the body than the
mind, it does not appear how the improvement of the mind can tend very
greatly to supersede this 'conspicuous infirmity'. A man who by great
excitements on his mind is able to pass two or three nights without
sleep, proportionably exhausts the vigour of his body, and this
diminution of health and strength will soon disturb the operations of
his understanding, so that by these great efforts he appears to have
made no real progress whatever in superseding the necessity of this
species of rest.

There is certainly a sufficiently marked difference in the various
characters of which we have some knowledge, relative to the energies of
their minds, their benevolent pursuits, etc., to enable us to judge
whether the operations of intellect have any decided effect in
prolonging the duration of human life. It is certain that no decided
effect of this kind has yet been observed. Though no attention of any
kind has ever produced such an effect as could be construed into the
smallest semblance of an approach towards immortality, yet of the two,
a certain attention to the body seems to have more effect in this
respect than an attention to the mind. The man who takes his temperate
meals and his bodily exercise, with scrupulous regularity, will
generally be found more healthy than the man who, very deeply engaged
in intellectual pursuits, often forgets for a time these bodily
cravings. The citizen who has retired, and whose ideas, perhaps,
scarcely soar above or extend beyond his little garden, puddling all
the morning about his borders of box, will, perhaps, live as long as
the philosopher whose range of intellect is the most extensive, and
whose views are the clearest of any of his contemporaries. It has been
positively observed by those who have attended to the bills of
mortality that women live longer upon an average than men, and, though
I would not by any means say that their intellectual faculties are
inferior, yet, I think, it must be allowed that, from their different
education, there are not so many women as men, who are excited to
vigorous mental exertion.

As in these and similar instances, or to take a larger range, as in the
great diversity of characters that have existed during some thousand
years, no decided difference has been observed in the duration of human
life from the operation of intellect, the mortality of man on earth
seems to be as completely established, and exactly upon the same
grounds, as any one, the most constant, of the laws of nature. An
immediate act of power in the Creator of the Universe might, indeed,
change one or all of these laws, either suddenly or gradually, but
without some indications of such a change, and such indications do not
exist, it. Is just as unphilosophical to suppose that the life of man
may be prolonged beyond any assignable limits, as to suppose that the
attraction of the earth will gradually be changed into repulsion and
that stones will ultimately rise instead of fall or that the earth will
fly off at a certain period to some more genial and warmer sun.

The conclusion of this chapter presents us, undoubtedly, with a very
beautiful and desirable picture, but like some of the landscapes drawn
from fancy and not imagined with truth, it fails of that interest in
the heart which nature and probability can alone give.

I cannot quit this subject without taking notice of these conjectures
of Mr Godwin and Mr Condorcet concerning the indefinite prolongation of
human life, as a very curious instance of the longing of the soul after
immortality. Both these gentlemen have rejected the light of revelation
which absolutely promises eternal life in another state. They have also
rejected the light of natural religion, which to the ablest intellects
in all ages has indicated the future existence of the soul. Yet so
congenial is the idea of immortality to the mind of man that they
cannot consent entirely to throw it out of their systems. After all
their fastidious scepticisms concerning the only probable mode of
immortality, they introduce a species of immortality of their own, not
only completely contradictory to every law of philosophical
probability, but in itself in the highest degree narrow, partial, and
unjust. They suppose that all the great, virtuous, and exalted minds
that have ever existed or that may exist for some thousands, perhaps
millions of years, will be sunk in annihilation, and that only a few
beings, not greater in number than can exist at once upon the earth,
will be ultimately crowned with immortality. Had such a tenet been
advanced as a tenet of revelation I am very sure that all the enemies
of religion, and probably Mr Godwin and Mr Condorcet among the rest,
would have exhausted the whole force of their ridicule upon it, as the
most puerile, the most absurd, the poorest, the most pitiful, the most
iniquitously unjust, and, consequently, the most unworthy of the Deity
that the superstitious folly of man could invent.

What a strange and curious proof do these conjectures exhibit of the
inconsistency of scepticism! For it should be observed, that there is a
very striking and essential difference between believing an assertion
which absolutely contradicts the most uniform experience, and an
assertion which contradicts nothing, but is merely beyond the power of
our present observation and knowledge. So diversified are the natural
objects around us, so many instances of mighty power daily offer
themselves to our view, that we may fairly presume, that there are many
forms and operations of nature which we have not yet observed, or
which, perhaps, we are not capable of observing with our present
confined inlets of knowledge. The resurrection of a spiritual body from
a natural body does not appear in itself a more wonderful instance of
power than the germination of a blade of wheat from the grain, or of an
oak from an acorn. Could we conceive an intelligent being, so placed as
to be conversant only with inanimate or full grown objects, and never
to have witnessed the process of vegetation and growth; and were
another being to shew him two little pieces of matter, a grain of
wheat, and an acorn, to desire him to examine them, to analyse them if
he pleased, and endeavour to find out their properties and essences;
and then to tell him, that however trifling these little bits of matter
might appear to him, that they possessed such curious powers of
selection, combination, arrangement, and almost of creation, that upon
being put into the ground, they would choose, amongst all the dirt and
moisture that surrounded them, those parts which best suited their
purpose, that they would collect and arrange these parts with wonderful
taste, judgement, and execution, and would rise up into beautiful
forms, scarcely in any respect analogous to the little bits of matter
which were first placed in the earth. I feel very little doubt that the
imaginary being which I have supposed would hesitate more, would
require better authority, and stronger proofs, before he believed these
strange assertions, than if he had been told, that a being of mighty
power, who had been the cause of all that he saw around him, and of
that existence of which he himself was conscious, would, by a great act
of power upon the death and corruption of human creatures, raise up the
essence of thought in an incorporeal, or at least invisible form, to
give it a happier existence in another state.

The only difference, with regard to our own apprehensions, that is not
in favour of the latter assertion is that the first miracle we have
repeatedly seen, and the last miracle we have not seen. I admit the
full weight of this prodigious difference, but surely no man can
hesitate a moment in saying that, putting Revelation out of the
question, the resurrection of a spiritual body from a natural body,
which may be merely one among the many operations of nature which we
cannot see, is an event indefinitely more probable than the immortality
of man on earth, which is not only an event of which no symptoms or
indications have yet appeared, but is a positive contradiction to one
of the most constant of the laws of nature that has ever come within
the observation of man.

When we extend our view beyond this life, it is evident that we can
have no other guides than authority, or conjecture, and perhaps,
indeed, an obscure and undefined feeling. What I say here, therefore,
does not appear to me in any respect to contradict what I said before,
when I observed that it was unphilosophical to expect any specifick
event that was not indicated by some kind of analogy in the past. In
ranging beyond the bourne from which no traveller returns, we must
necessarily quit this rule; but with regard to events that may be
expected to happen on earth, we can seldom quit it consistently with
true philosophy. Analogy has, however, as I conceive, great latitude.
For instance, man has discovered many of the laws of nature: analogy
seems to indicate that he will discover many more; but no analogy seems
to indicate that he will discover a sixth sense, or a new species of
power in the human mind, entirely beyond the train of our present
observations.

The powers of selection, combination, and transmutation, which every
seed shews, are truly miraculous. Who can imagine that these wonderful
faculties are contained in these little bits of matter? To me it
appears much more philosophical to suppose that the mighty God of
nature is present in full energy in all these operations. To this all
powerful Being, it would be equally easy to raise an oak without an
acorn as with one. The preparatory process of putting seeds into the
ground is merely ordained for the use of man, as one among the various
other excitements necessary to awaken matter into mind. It is an idea
that will be found consistent, equally with the natural phenomena
around us, with the various events of human life, and with the
successive revelations of God to man, to suppose that the world is a
mighty process for the creation and formation of mind. Many vessels
will necessarily come out of this great furnace in wrong shapes. These
will be broken and thrown aside as useless; while those vessels whose
forms are full of truth, grace, and loveliness, will be wafted into
happier situations, nearer the presence of the mighty maker.

I ought perhaps again to make an apology to my readers for dwelling so
long upon a conjecture which many, I know, will think too absurd and
improbable to require the least discussion. But if it be as improbable
and as contrary to the genuine spirit of philosophy as I own I think it
is, why should it not be shewn to be so in a candid examination? A
conjecture, however improbable on the first view of it, advanced by
able and ingenious men, seems at least to deserve investigation. For my
own part I feel no disinclination whatever to give that degree of
credit to the opinion of the probable immortality of man on earth,
which the appearances that can be brought in support of it deserve.
Before we decide upon the utter improbability of such an event, it is
but fair impartially to examine these appearances; and from such an
examination I think we may conclude, that we have rather less reason
for supposing that the life of man may be indefinitely prolonged, than
that trees may be made to grow indefinitely high, or potatoes
indefinitely large. Though Mr Godwin advances the idea of the
indefinite prolongation of human life merely as a conjecture, yet as he
has produced some appearances, which in his conception favour the
supposition, he must certainly intend that these appearances should be
examined and this is all that I have meant to do.




CHAPTER 13

Error of Mr Godwin is considering man too much in the light of a being
merely rational--In the compound being, man, the passions will always
act as disturbing forces in the decisions of the
understanding--Reasonings of Mr Godwin on the subject of coercion--Some
truths of a nature not to be communicated from one man to another.


In the chapter which I have been examining, Mr Godwin professes to
consider the objection to his system of equality from the principle of
population. It has appeared, I think clearly, that he is greatly
erroneous in his statement of the distance of this difficulty, and that
instead of myriads of centuries, it is really not thirty years, or even
thirty days, distant from us. The supposition of the approach of man to
immortality on earth is certainly not of a kind to soften the
difficulty. The only argument, therefore, in the chapter which has any
tendency to remove the objection is the conjecture concerning the
extinction of the passion between the sexes, but as this is a mere
conjecture, unsupported by the smallest shadow of proof, the force of
the objection may be fairly said to remain unimpaired, and it is
undoubtedly of sufficient weight of itself completely to overturn Mr
Godwin's whole system of equality. I will, however, make one or two
observations on a few of the prominent parts of Mr Godwin's reasonings
which will contribute to place in a still clearer point of view the
little hope that we can reasonably entertain of those vast improvements
in the nature of man and of society which he holds up to our admiring
gaze in his Political Justice.

Mr Godwin considers man too much in the light of a being merely
intellectual. This error, at least such I conceive it to be, pervades
his whole work and mixes itself with all his reasonings. The voluntary
actions of men may originate in their opinions, but these opinions will
be very differently modified in creatures compounded of a rational
faculty and corporal propensities from what they would be in beings
wholly intellectual. Mr Godwin, in proving that sound reasoning and
truth are capable of being adequately communicated, examines the
proposition first practically, and then adds, 'Such is the appearance
which this proposition assumes, when examined in a loose and practical
view. In strict consideration it will not admit of debate. Man is a
rational being, etc.' (Bk. I, ch. 5; in the third edition Vol. I, p.
88). So far from calling this a strict consideration of the subject, I
own I should call it the loosest, and most erroneous, way possible, of
considering it. It is the calculating the velocity of a falling body in
vacuo, and persisting in it, that it would be the same through whatever
resisting mediums it might fall. This was not Newton's mode of
philosophizing. Very few general propositions are just in application
to a particular subject. The moon is not kept in her orbit round the
earth, nor the earth in her orbit round the sun, by a force that varies
merely in the inverse ratio of the squares of the distances. To make
the general theory just in application to the revolutions of these
bodies, it was necessary to calculate accurately the disturbing force
of the sun upon the moon, and of the moon upon the earth; and till
these disturbing forces were properly estimated, actual observations on
the motions of these bodies would have proved that the theory was not
accurately true.

I am willing to allow that every voluntary act is preceded by a
decision of the mind, but it is strangely opposite to what I should
conceive to be the just theory upon the subject, and a palpable
contradiction to all experience, to say that the corporal propensities
of man do not act very powerfully, as disturbing forces, in these
decisions. The question, therefore, does not merely depend upon whether
a man may be made to understand a distinct proposition or be convinced
by an unanswerable argument. A truth may be brought home to his
conviction as a rational being, though he may determine to act contrary
to it, as a compound being. The cravings of hunger, the love of liquor,
the desire of possessing a beautiful woman, will urge men to actions,
of the fatal consequences of which, to the general interests of
society, they are perfectly well convinced, even at the very time they
commit them. Remove their bodily cravings, and they would not hesitate
a moment in determining against such actions. Ask them their opinion of
the same conduct in another person, and they would immediately
reprobate it. But in their own case, and under all the circumstances of
their situation with these bodily cravings, the decision of the
compound being is different from the conviction of the rational being.

If this be the just view of the subject, and both theory and experience
unite to prove that it is, almost all Mr Godwin's reasonings on the
subject of coercion in his seventh chapter, will appear to be founded
on error. He spends some time in placing in a ridiculous point of view
the attempt to convince a man's understanding and to clear up a
doubtful proposition in his mind, by blows. Undoubtedly it is both
ridiculous and barbarous, and so is cock-fighting, but one has little
more to do with the real object of human punishments than the other.
One frequent (indeed much too frequent) mode of punishment is death. Mr
Godwin will hardly think this intended for conviction, at least it does
not appear how the individual or the society could reap much future
benefit from an understanding enlightened in this manner.

The principal objects which human punishments have in view are
undoubtedly restraint and example; restraint, or removal, of an
individual member whose vicious habits are likely to be prejudicial to
the society'; and example, which by expressing the sense of the
community with regard to a particular crime, and by associating more
nearly and visibly crime and punishment, holds out a moral motive to
dissuade others from the commission of it.

Restraint, Mr Godwin thinks, may be permitted as a temporary expedient,
though he reprobates solitary imprisonment, which has certainly been
the most successful, and, indeed, almost the only attempt towards the
moral amelioration of offenders. He talks of the selfish passions that
are fostered by solitude and of the virtues generated in society. But
surely these virtues are not generated in the society of a prison. Were
the offender confined to the society of able and virtuous men he would
probably be more improved than in solitude. But is this practicable? Mr
Godwin's ingenuity is more frequently employed in finding out evils
than in suggesting practical remedies.

Punishment, for example, is totally reprobated. By endeavouring to make
examples too impressive and terrible, nations have, indeed, been led
into the most barbarous cruelties, but the abuse of any practice is not
a good argument against its use. The indefatigable pains taken in this
country to find out a murder, and the certainty of its punishment, has
powerfully contributed to generate that sentiment which is frequent in
the mouths of the common people, that a murder will sooner or later
come to light; and the habitual horror in which murder is in
consequence held will make a man, in the agony of passion, throw down
his knife for fear he should be tempted to use it in the gratification
of his revenge. In Italy, where murderers, by flying to a sanctuary,
are allowed more frequently to escape, the crime has never been held in
the same detestation and has consequently been more frequent. No man,
who is at all aware of the operation of moral motives, can doubt for a
moment, that if every murder in Italy had been invariably punished, the
use of the stiletto in transports of passion would have been
comparatively but little known.

That human laws either do, or can, proportion the punishment accurately
to the offence, no person will have the folly to assert. From the
inscrutability of motives the thing is absolutely impossible, but this
imperfection, though it may be called a species of injustice, is no
valid argument against human laws. It is the lot of man, that he will
frequently have to choose between two evils; and it is a sufficient
reason for the adoption of any institution, that it is the best mode
that suggests itself of preventing greater evils. A continual endeavour
should undoubtedly prevail to make these institutions as perfect as the
nature of them will admit. But nothing is so easy as to find fault with
human institutions; nothing so difficult as to suggest adequate
practical improvements. It is to be lamented, that more men of talents
employ their time in the former occupation than in the latter.

The frequency of crime among men, who, as the common saying is, know
better, sufficiently proves, that some truths may be brought home to
the conviction of the mind without always producing the proper effect
upon the conduct. There are other truths of a nature that perhaps never
can be adequately communicated from one man to another. The superiority
of the pleasures of intellect to those of sense, Mr Godwin considers as
a fundamental truth. Taking all circumstances into consideration, I
should be disposed to agree with him; but how am I to communicate this
truth to a person who has scarcely ever felt intellectual pleasure? I
may as well attempt to explain the nature and beauty of colours to a
blind man. If I am ever so laborious, patient, and clear, and have the
most repeated opportunities of expostulation, any real progress toward
the accomplishment of my purpose seems absolutely hopeless. There is no
common measure between us. I cannot proceed step by step.. It is a
truth of a nature absolutely incapable of demonstration. All that I can
say is, that the wisest and best men in all ages had agreed in giving
the preference, very greatly, to the pleasures of intellect; and that
my own experience completely confirmed the truth of their decisions;
that I had found sensual pleasures vain, transient, and continually
attended with tedium and disgust; but that intellectual pleasures
appeared to me ever fresh and young, filled up all my hours
satisfactorily, gave a new zest to life, and diffused a lasting
serenity over my mind. If he believe me, it can only be from respect
and veneration for my authority. It is credulity, and not conviction. I
have not said any thing, nor can any thing be said, of a nature to
produce real conviction. The affair is not an affair of reasoning, but
of experience. He would probably observe in reply, what you say may be
very true with regard to yourself and many other good men, but for my
own part I feel very differently upon the subject. I have very
frequently taken up a book and almost as frequently gone to sleep over
it; but when I pass an evening with a gay party, or a pretty woman, I
feel alive, and in spirits, and truly enjoy my existence.

Under such circumstances, reasoning and arguments are not instruments
from which success can be expected. At some future time perhaps, real
satiety of sensual pleasures, or some accidental impressions that
awakened the energies of his mind, might effect that, in a month, which
the most patient and able expostulations might be incapable of
effecting in forty years.




CHAPTER 14

Mr Godwin's five propositions respecting political truth, on which his
whole work hinges, not established--Reasons we have for supposing, from
the distress occasioned by the principle of population, that the vices
and moral weakness of man can never be wholly
eradicated--Perfectibility, in the sense in which Mr Godwin uses the
term, not applicable to man--Nature of the real perfectibility of man
illustrated.


If the reasonings of the preceding chapter are just, the corollaries
respecting political truth, which Mr Godwin draws from the proposition,
that the voluntary actions of men originate in their opinions, will not
appear to be clearly established. These corollaries are, "Sound
reasoning and truth, when adequately communicated, must always be
victorious over error: Sound reasoning and truth are capable of being
so communicated: Truth is omnipotent: The vices and moral weakness of
man are not invincible: Man is perfectible, or in other words,
susceptible of perpetual improvement."

The first three propositions may be considered a complete syllogism. If
by adequately communicated, be meant such a conviction as to produce an
adequate effect upon the conduct, the major may be allowed and the
minor denied. The consequent, or the omnipotence of truth, of course
falls to the ground. If by 'adequately communicated' be meant merely
the conviction of the rational faculty, the major must be denied, the
minor will be only true in cases capable of demonstration, and the
consequent equally falls. The fourth proposition Mr Godwin calls the
preceding proposition, with a slight variation in the statement. If so,
it must accompany the preceding proposition in its fall. But it may be
worth while to inquire, with reference to the principal argument of
this essay, into the particular reasons which we have for supposing
that the vices and moral weakness of man can never be wholly overcome
in this world.

Man, according to Mr Godwin, is a creature formed what he is by the
successive impressions which he has received, from the first moment
that the germ from which he sprung was animated. Could he be placed in
a situation, where he was subject to no evil impressions whatever,
though it might be doubted whether in such a situation virtue could
exist, vice would certainly be banished. The great bent of Mr Godwin's
work on Political Justice, if I understand it rightly, is to shew that
the greater part of the vices and weaknesses of men proceed from the
injustice of their political and social institutions, and that if these
were removed and the understandings of men more enlightened, there
would be little or no temptation in the world to evil. As it has been
clearly proved, however, (at least as I think) that this is entirely a
false conception, and that, independent of any political or social
institutions whatever, the greater part of mankind, from the fixed and
unalterable laws of nature, must ever be subject to the evil
temptations arising from want, besides other passions, it follows from
Mr Godwin's definition of man that such impressions, and combinations
of impressions, cannot be afloat in the world without generating a
variety of bad men. According to Mr Godwin's own conception of the
formation of character, it is surely as improbable that under such
circumstances all men will be virtuous as that sixes will come up a
hundred times following upon the dice. The great variety of
combinations upon the dice in a repeated succession of throws appears
to me not inaptly to represent the great variety of character that must
necessarily exist in the world, supposing every individual to be formed
what he is by that combination of impressions which he has received
since his first existence. And this comparison will, in some measure,
shew the absurdity of supposing, that exceptions will ever become
general rules; that extraordinary and unusual combinations will be
frequent; or that the individual instances of great virtue which had
appeared in all ages of the world will ever prevail universally.

I am aware that Mr Godwin might say that the comparison is in one
respect inaccurate, that in the case of the dice, the preceding causes,
or rather the chances respecting the preceding causes, were always the
same, and that, therefore, I could have no good reason for supposing
that a greater number of sixes would come up in the next hundred times
of throwing than in the preceding same number of throws. But, that man
had in some sort a power of influencing those causes that formed
character, and that every good and virtuous man that was produced, by
the influence which he must necessarily have, rather increased the
probability that another such virtuous character would be generated,
whereas the coming up of sixes upon the dice once, would certainly not
increase the probability of their coming up a second time. I admit this
objection to the accuracy of the comparison, but it is only partially
valid. Repeated experience has assured us, that the influence of the
most virtuous character will rarely prevail against very strong
temptations to evil. It will undoubtedly affect some, but it will fail
with a much greater number. Had Mr Godwin succeeded in his attempt to
prove that these temptations to evil could by the exertions of man be
removed, I would give up the comparison; or at least allow, that a man
might be so far enlightened with regard to the mode of shaking his
elbow, that he would be able to throw sixes every time. But as long as
a great number of those impressions which form character, like the nice
motions of the arm, remain absolutely independent of the will of man,
though it would be the height of folly and presumption to attempt to
calculate the relative proportions of virtue and vice at the future
periods of the world, it may be safely asserted that the vices and
moral weakness of mankind, taken in the mass, are invincible.

The fifth proposition is the general deduction from the four former and
will consequently fall, as the foundations which support it have given
way. In the sense in which Mr Godwin understands the term
'perfectible', the perfectibility of man cannot be asserted, unless the
preceding propositions could have been clearly established. There is,
however, one sense, which the term will bear, in which it is, perhaps,
just. It may be said with truth that man is always susceptible of
improvement, or that there never has been, or will be, a period of his
history, in which he can be said to have reached his possible acme of
perfection. Yet it does not by any means follow from this, that our
efforts to improve man will always succeed, or even that he will ever
make, in the greatest number of ages, any extraordinary strides towards
perfection. The only inference that can be drawn is that the precise
limit of his improvement cannot possibly be known. And I cannot help
again reminding the reader of a distinction which, it appears to me,
ought particularly to be attended to in the present question: I mean,
the essential difference there is between an unlimited improvement and
an improvement the limit of which cannot be ascertained. The former is
an improvement not applicable to man under the present laws of his
nature. The latter, undoubtedly, is applicable.

The real perfectibility of man may be illustrated, as I have mentioned
before, by the perfectibility of a plant. The object of the
enterprising florist is, as I conceive, to unite size, symmetry, and
beauty of colour. It would surely be presumptuous in the most
successful improver to affirm, that he possessed a carnation in which
these qualities existed in the greatest possible state of perfection.
However beautiful his flower may be, other care, other soil, or other
suns, might produce one still more beautiful.

Yet, although he may be aware of the absurdity of supposing that he has
reached perfection, and though he may know by what means he attained
that degree of beauty in the flower which he at present possesses, yet
he cannot be sure that by pursuing similar means, rather increased in
strength, he will obtain a more beautiful blossom. By endeavouring to
improve one quality, he may impair the beauty of another. The richer
mould which he would employ to increase the size of his plant would
probably burst the calyx, and destroy at once its symmetry. In a
similar manner, the forcing manure used to bring about the French
Revolution, and to give a greater freedom and energy to the human mind,
has burst the calyx of humanity, the restraining bond of all society;
and, however large the separate petals have grown, however strongly, or
even beautifully, a few of them have been marked, the whole is at
present a loose, deformed, disjointed mass, without union, symmetry, or
harmony of colouring.

Were it of consequence to improve pinks and carnations, though we could
have no hope of raising them as large as cabbages, we might undoubtedly
expect, by successive efforts, to obtain more beautiful specimens than
we at present possess. No person can deny the importance of improving
the happiness of the human species. Every the least advance in this
respect is highly valuable. But an experiment with the human race is
not like an experiment upon inanimate objects. The bursting of a flower
may be a trifle. Another will soon succeed it. But the bursting of the
bonds of society is such a separation of parts as cannot take place
without giving the most acute pain to thousands: and a long time may
elapse, and much misery may be endured, before the wound grows up again.

As the five propositions which I have been examining may be considered
as the corner stones of Mr Godwin's fanciful structure, and, indeed, as
expressing the aim and bent of his whole work, however excellent much
of his detached reasoning may be, he must be considered as having
failed in the great object of his undertaking. Besides the difficulties
arising from the compound nature of man, which he has by no means
sufficiently smoothed, the principal argument against the
perfectibility of man and society remains whole and unimpaired from any
thing that he has advanced. And as far as I can trust my own judgement,
this argument appears to be conclusive, not only against the
perfectibility of man, in the enlarged sense in which Mr Godwin
understands the term, but against any very marked and striking change
for the better, in the form and structure of general society; by which
I mean any great and decided amelioration of the condition of the lower
classes of mankind, the most numerous, and, consequently, in a general
view of the subject, the most important part of the human race. Were I
to live a thousand years, and the laws of nature to remain the same, I
should little fear, or rather little hope, a contradiction from
experience in asserting that no possible sacrifices or exertions of the
rich, in a country which had been long inhabited, could for any time
place the lower classes of the community in a situation equal, with
regard to circumstances, to the situation of the common people about
thirty years ago in the northern States of America.

The lower classes of people in Europe may at some future period be much
better instructed than they are at present; they may be taught to
employ the little spare time they have in many better ways than at the
ale-house; they may live under better and more equal laws than they
have ever hitherto done, perhaps, in any country; and I even conceive
it possible, though not probable that they may have more leisure; but
it is not in the nature of things that they can be awarded such a
quantity of money or subsistence as will allow them all to marry early,
in the full confidence that they shall be able to provide with ease for
a numerous family.




CHAPTER 15

Models too perfect may sometimes rather impede than promote
improvement--Mr Godwin's essay on 'Avarice and
Profusion'--Impossibility of dividing the necessary labour of a society
amicably among all--Invectives against labour may produce present evil,
with little or no chance of producing future good--An accession to the
mass of agricultural labour must always be an advantage to the labourer.


Mr Godwin in the preface to his Enquirer, drops a few expressions which
seem to hint at some change in his opinions since he wrote the
Political Justice; and as this is a work now of some years standing, I
should certainly think that I had been arguing against opinions which
the author had himself seen reason to alter, but that in some of the
essays of the Enquirer, Mr Godwin's peculiar mode of thinking appears
in as striking a light as ever.

It has been frequently observed that though we cannot hope to reach
perfection in any thing, yet that it must always be advantageous to us
to place before our eyes the most perfect models. This observation has
a plausible appearance, but is very far from being generally true. I
even doubt its truth in one of the most obvious exemplifications that
would occur. I doubt whether a very young painter would receive so much
benefit, from an attempt to copy a highly finished and perfect picture,
as from copying one where the outlines were more strongly marked and
the manner of laying on the colours was more easily discoverable. But
in cases where the perfection of the model is a perfection of a
different and superior nature from that towards which we should
naturally advance, we shall not always fail in making any progress
towards it, but we shall in all probability impede the progress which
we might have expected to make had we not fixed our eyes upon so
perfect a model. A highly intellectual being, exempt from the infirm
calls of hunger or sleep, is undoubtedly a much more perfect existence
than man, but were man to attempt to copy such a model, he would not
only fail in making any advances towards it; but by unwisely straining
to imitate what was inimitable, he would probably destroy the little
intellect which he was endeavouring to improve.

The form and structure of society which Mr Godwin describes is as
essentially distinct from any forms of society which have hitherto
prevailed in the world as a being that can live without food or sleep
is from a man. By improving society in its present form, we are making
no more advances towards such a state of things as he pictures than we
should make approaches towards a line, with regard to which we were
walking parallel. The question, therefore, is whether, by looking to
such a form of society as our polar star, we are likely to advance or
<DW44> the improvement of the human species? Mr Godwin appears to me to
have decided this question against himself in his essay on 'Avarice and
Profusion' in the Enquirer.

Dr Adam Smith has very justly observed that nations as well as
individuals grow rich by parsimony and poor by profusion, and that,
therefore, every frugal man was a friend and every spendthrift an enemy
to his country. The reason he gives is that what is saved from revenue
is always added to stock, and is therefore taken from the maintenance
of labour that is generally unproductive and employed in the
maintenance of labour that realizes itself in valuable commodities. No
observation can be more evidently just. The subject of Mr Godwin's
essay is a little similar in its first appearance, but in essence is as
distinct as possible. He considers the mischief of profusion as an
acknowledged truth, and therefore makes his comparison between the
avaricious man, and the man who spends his income. But the avaricious
man of Mr Godwin is totally a distinct character, at least with regard
to his effect upon the prosperity of the state, from the frugal man of
Dr Adam Smith. The frugal man in order to make more money saves from
his income and adds to his capital, and this capital he either employs
himself in the maintenance of productive labour, or he lends it to some
other person who will probably employ it in this way. He benefits the
state because he adds to its general capital, and because wealth
employed as capital not only sets in motion more labour than when spent
as income, but the labour is besides of a more valuable kind. But the
avaricious man of Mr Godwin locks up his wealth in a chest and sets in
motion no labour of any kind, either productive or unproductive. This
is so essential a difference that Mr Godwin's decision in his essay
appears at once as evidently false as Dr Adam Smith's position is
evidently true. It could not, indeed, but occur to Mr Godwin that some
present inconvenience might arise to the poor from thus locking up the
funds destined for the maintenance of labour. The only way, therefore,
he had of weakening this objection was to compare the two characters
chiefly with regard to their tendency to accelerate the approach of
that happy state of cultivated equality, on which he says we ought
always to fix our eyes as our polar star.

I think it has been proved in the former parts of this essay that such
a state of society is absolutely impracticable. What consequences then
are we to expect from looking to such a point as our guide and polar
star in the great sea of political discovery? Reason would teach us to
expect no other than winds perpetually adverse, constant but fruitless
toil, frequent shipwreck, and certain misery. We shall not only fail in
making the smallest real approach towards such a perfect form of
society; but by wasting our strength of mind and body, in a direction
in which it is impossible to proceed, and by the frequent distress
which we must necessarily occasion by our repeated failures, we shall
evidently impede that degree of improvement in society, which is really
attainable.

It has appeared that a society constituted according to Mr Godwin's
system must, from the inevitable laws of our nature, degenerate into a
class of proprietors and a class of labourers, and that the
substitution of benevolence for self-love as the moving principle of
society, instead of producing the happy effects that might be expected
from so fair a name, would cause the same pressure of want to be felt
by the whole of society, which is now felt only by a part. It is to the
established administration of property and to the apparently narrow
principle of self-love that we are indebted for all the noblest
exertions of human genius, all the finer and more delicate emotions of
the soul, for everything, indeed, that distinguishes the civilized from
the savage state; and no sufficient change has as yet taken place in
the nature of civilized man to enable us to say that he either is, or
ever will be, in a state when he may safely throw down the ladder by
which he has risen to this eminence.

If in every society that has advanced beyond the savage state, a class
of proprietors and a class of labourers must necessarily exist, it is
evident that, as labour is the only property of the class of labourers,
every thing that tends to diminish the value of this property must tend
to diminish the possession of this part of society. The only way that a
poor man has of supporting himself in independence is by the exertion
of his bodily strength. This is the only commodity he has to give in
exchange for the necessaries of life. It would hardly appear then that
you benefit him by narrowing the market for this commodity, by
decreasing the demand for labour, and lessening the value of the only
property that he possesses.

It should be observed that the principal argument of this Essay only
goes to prove the necessity of a class of proprietors, and a class of
labourers, but by no means infers that the present great inequality of
property is either necessary or useful to society. On the contrary, it
must certainly be considered as an evil, and every institution that
promotes it is essentially bad and impolitic. But whether a government
could with advantage to society actively interfere to repress
inequality of fortunes may be a matter of doubt. Perhaps the generous
system of perfect liberty adopted by Dr Adam Smith and the French
economists would be ill exchanged for any system of restraint.

Mr Godwin would perhaps say that the whole system of barter and
exchange is a vile and iniquitous traffic. If you would essentially
relieve the poor man, you should take a part of his labour upon
yourself, or give him your money, without exacting so severe a return
for it. In answer to the first method proposed, it may be observed,
that even if the rich could be persuaded to assist the poor in this
way, the value of the assistance would be comparatively trifling. The
rich, though they think themselves of great importance, bear but a
small proportion in point of numbers to the poor, and would, therefore,
relieve them but of a small part of their burdens by taking a share.
Were all those that are employed in the labours of luxuries added to
the number of those employed in producing necessaries, and could these
necessary labours be amicably divided among all, each man's share might
indeed be comparatively light; but desirable as such an amicable
division would undoubtedly be, I cannot conceive any practical
principle according to which it could take place. It has been shewn,
that the spirit of benevolence, guided by the strict impartial justice
that Mr Godwin describes, would, if vigorously acted upon, depress in
want and misery the whole human race. Let us examine what would be the
consequence, if the proprietor were to retain a decent share for
himself, but to give the rest away to the poor, without exacting a task
from them in return. Not to mention the idleness and the vice that such
a proceeding, if general, would probably create in the present state of
society, and the great risk there would be, of diminishing the produce
of land, as well as the labours of luxury, another objection yet
remains.

Mr Godwin seems to have but little respect for practical principles;
but I own it appears to me, that he is a much greater benefactor to
mankind, who points out how an inferior good may be attained, than he
who merely expatiates on the deformity of the present state of society,
and the beauty of a different state, without pointing out a practical
method, that might be immediately applied, of accelerating our advances
from the one, to the other.

It has appeared that from the principle of population more will always
be in want than can be adequately supplied. The surplus of the rich man
might be sufficient for three, but four will be desirous to obtain it.
He cannot make this selection of three out of the four without
conferring a great favour on those that are the objects of his choice.
These persons must consider themselves as under a great obligation to
him and as dependent upon him for their support. The rich man would
feel his power and the poor man his dependence, and the evil effects of
these two impressions on the human heart are well known. Though I
perfectly agree with Mr Godwin therefore in the evil of hard labour,
yet I still think it a less evil, and less calculated to debase the
human mind, than dependence, and every history of man that we have ever
read places in a strong point of view the danger to which that mind is
exposed which is entrusted with constant power.

In the present state of things, and particularly when labour is in
request, the man who does a day's work for me confers full as great an
obligation upon me as I do upon him. I possess what he wants, he
possesses what I want. We make an amicable exchange. The poor man walks
erect in conscious independence; and the mind of his employer is not
vitiated by a sense of power.

Three or four hundred years ago there was undoubtedly much less labour
in England, in proportion to the population, than at present, but there
was much more dependence, and we probably should not now enjoy our
present degree of civil liberty if the poor, by the introduction of
manufactures, had not been enabled to give something in exchange for
the provisions of the great Lords, instead of being dependent upon
their bounty. Even the greatest enemies of trade and manufactures, and
I do not reckon myself a very determined friend to them, must allow
that when they were introduced into England, liberty came in their
train.

Nothing that has been said tends in the most remote degree to
undervalue the principle of benevolence. It is one of the noblest and
most godlike qualities of the human heart, generated, perhaps, slowly
and gradually from self-love, and afterwards intended to act as a
general law, whose kind office it should be, to soften the partial
deformities, to correct the asperities, and to smooth the wrinkles of
its parent: and this seems to be the analog of all nature. Perhaps
there is no one general law of nature that will not appear, to us at
least, to produce partial evil; and we frequently observe at the same
time, some bountiful provision which, acting as another general law,
corrects the inequalities of the first.

The proper office of benevolence is to soften the partial evils arising
from self-love, but it can never be substituted in its place. If no man
were to allow himself to act till he had completely determined that the
action he was about to perform was more conducive than any other to the
general good, the most enlightened minds would hesitate in perplexity
and amazement; and the unenlightened would be continually committing
the grossest mistakes.

As Mr Godwin, therefore, has not laid down any practical principle
according to which the necessary labours of agriculture might be
amicably shared among the whole class of labourers, by general
invectives against employing the poor he appears to pursue an
unattainable good through much present evil. For if every man who
employs the poor ought to be considered as their enemy, and as adding
to the weight of their oppressions, and if the miser is for this reason
to be preferred to the man who spends his income, it follows that any
number of men who now spend their incomes might, to the advantage of
society, be converted into misers. Suppose then that a hundred thousand
persons who now employ ten men each were to lock up their wealth from
general use, it is evident, that a million of working men of different
kinds would be completely thrown out of all employment. The extensive
misery that such an event would produce in the present state of society
Mr Godwin himself could hardly refuse to acknowledge, and I question
whether he might not find some difficulty in proving that a conduct of
this kind tended more than the conduct of those who spend their incomes
to 'place human beings in the condition in which they ought to be
placed.' But Mr Godwin says that the miser really locks up nothing,
that the point has not been rightly understood, and that the true
development and definition of the nature of wealth have not been
applied to illustrate it. Having defined therefore wealth, very justly,
to be the commodities raised and fostered by human labour, he observes
that the miser locks up neither corn, nor oxen, nor clothes, nor
houses. Undoubtedly he does not really lock up these articles, but he
locks up the power of producing them, which is virtually the same.
These things are certainly used and consumed by his contemporaries, as
truly, and to as great an extent, as if he were a beggar; but not to as
great an extent as if he had employed his wealth in turning up more
land, in breeding more oxen, in employing more tailors, and in building
more houses. But supposing, for a moment, that the conduct of the miser
did not tend to check any really useful produce, how are all those who
are thrown out of employment to obtain patents which they may shew in
order to be awarded a proper share of the food and raiment produced by
the society? This is the unconquerable difficulty.

I am perfectly willing to concede to Mr Godwin that there is much more
labour in the world than is really necessary, and that, if the lower
classes of society could agree among themselves never to work more than
six or seven hours in the day, the commodities essential to human
happiness might still be produced in as great abundance as at present.
But it is almost impossible to conceive that such an agreement could be
adhered to. From the principle of population, some would necessarily be
more in want than others. Those that had large families would naturally
be desirous of exchanging two hours more of their labour for an ampler
quantity of subsistence. How are they to be prevented from making this
exchange? it would be a violation of the first and most sacred property
that a man possesses to attempt, by positive institutions, to interfere
with his command over his own labour.

Till Mr Godwin, therefore, can point out some practical plan according
to which the necessary labour in a society might be equitably divided,
his invectives against labour, if they were attended to, would
certainly produce much present evil without approximating us to that
state of cultivated equality to which he looks forward as his polar
star, and which, he seems to think, should at present be our guide in
determining the nature and tendency of human actions. A mariner guided
by such a polar star is in danger of shipwreck.

Perhaps there is no possible way in which wealth could in general be
employed so beneficially to a state, and particularly to the lower
orders of it, as by improving and rendering productive that land which
to a farmer would not answer the expense of cultivation. Had Mr Godwin
exerted his energetic eloquence in painting the superior worth and
usefulness of the character who employed the poor in this way, to him
who employed them in narrow luxuries, every enlightened man must have
applauded his efforts. The increasing demand for agricultural labour
must always tend to better the condition of the poor; and if the
accession of work be of this kind, so far is it from being true that
the poor would be obliged to work ten hours for the same price that
they before worked eight, that the very reverse would be the fact; and
a labourer might then support his wife and family as well by the labour
of six hours as he could before by the labour of eight.

The labour created by luxuries, though useful in distributing the
produce of the country, without vitiating the proprietor by power, or
debasing the labourer by dependence, has not, indeed, the same
beneficial effects on the state of the poor. A great accession of work
from manufacturers, though it may raise the price of labour even more
than an increasing demand for agricultural labour, yet, as in this case
the quantity of food in the country may not be proportionably
increasing, the advantage to the poor will be but temporary, as the
price of provisions must necessarily rise in proportion to the price of
labour. Relative to this subject, I cannot avoid venturing a few
remarks on a part of Dr Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, speaking at the
same time with that diffidence which I ought certainly to feel in
differing from a person so justly celebrated in the political world.




CHAPTER 16

Probable error of Dr Adam Smith in representing every increase of the
revenue or stock of a society as an increase in the funds for the
maintenance of labour--Instances where an increase of wealth can have
no tendency to better the condition of the labouring poor--England has
increased in riches without a proportional increase in the funds for
the maintenance of labour--The state of the poor in China would not be
improved by an increase of wealth from manufactures.


The professed object of Dr Adam Smith's inquiry is the nature and
causes of the wealth of nations. There is another inquiry, however,
perhaps still more interesting, which he occasionally mixes with it; I
mean an inquiry into the causes which affect the happiness of nations
or the happiness and comfort of the lower orders of society, which is
the most numerous class in every nation. I am sufficiency aware of the
near connection of these two subjects, and that the causes which tend
to increase the wealth of a state tend also, generally speaking, to
increase the happiness of the lower classes of the people. But perhaps
Dr Adam Smith has considered these two inquiries as still more nearly
connected than they really are; at least, he has not stopped to take
notice of those instances where the wealth of a society may increase
(according to his definition of 'wealth') without having any tendency
to increase the comforts of the labouring part of it. I do not mean to
enter into a philosophical discussion of what constitutes the proper
happiness of man, but shall merely consider two universally
acknowledged ingredients, health, and the command of the necessaries
and conveniences of life.

Little or no doubt can exist that the comforts of the labouring poor
depend upon the increase of the funds destined for the maintenance of
labour, and will be very exactly in proportion to the rapidity of this
increase. The demand for labour which such increase would occasion, by
creating a competition in the market, must necessarily raise the value
of labour, and, till the additional number of hands required were
reared, the increased funds would be distributed to the same number of
persons as before the increase, and therefore every labourer would live
comparatively at his ease. But perhaps Dr Adam Smith errs in
representing every increase of the revenue or stock of a society as an
increase of these funds. Such surplus stock or revenue will, indeed,
always be considered by the individual possessing it as an additional
fund from which he may maintain more labour: but it will not be a real
and effectual fund for the maintenance of an additional number of
labourers, unless the whole, or at least a great part of this increase
of the stock or revenue of the society, be convertible into a
proportional quantity of provisions; and it will not be so convertible
where the increase has arisen merely from the produce of labour, and
not from the produce of land. A distinction will in this case occur,
between the number of hands which the stock of the society could
employ, and the number which its territory can maintain.

To explain myself by an instance. Dr Adam Smith defines the wealth of a
nation to consist. In the annual produce of its land and labour. This
definition evidently includes manufactured produce, as well as the
produce of the land. Now supposing a nation for a course of years was
to add what it saved from its yearly revenue to its manufacturing
capital solely, and not to its capital employed upon land, it is
evident that it might grow richer according to the above definition,
without a power of supporting a greater number of labourers, and,
therefore, without an increase in the real funds for the maintenance of
labour. There would, notwithstanding, be a demand for labour from the
power which each manufacturer would possess, or at least think he
possessed, of extending his old stock in trade or of setting up fresh
works. This demand would of course raise the price of labour, but if
the yearly stock of provisions in the country was not increasing, this
rise would soon turn out to be merely nominal, as the price of
provisions must necessarily rise with it. The demand for manufacturing
labourers might, indeed, entice many from agriculture and thus tend to
diminish the annual produce of the land, but we will suppose any effect
of this kind to be compensated by improvements in the instruments of
agriculture, and the quantity of provisions therefore to remain the
same. Improvements in manufacturing machinery would of course take
place, and this circumstance, added to the greater number of hands
employed in manufactures, would cause the annual produce of the labour
of the country to be upon the whole greatly increased. The wealth
therefore of the country would be increasing annually, according to the
definition, and might not, perhaps, be increasing very slowly.

The question is whether wealth, increasing in this way, has any
tendency to better the condition of the labouring poor. It is a
self-evident proposition that any general rise in the price of labour,
the stock of provisions remaining the same, can only be a nominal rise,
as it must very shortly be followed by a proportional rise in the price
of provisions. The increase in the price of labour, therefore, which we
have supposed, would have little or no effect in giving the labouring
poor a greater command over the necessaries and conveniences of life.
In this respect they would be nearly in the same state as before. In
one other respect they would be in a worse state. A greater proportion
of them would be employed in manufactures, and fewer, consequently, in
agriculture. And this exchange of professions will be allowed, I think,
by all, to be very unfavourable in respect of health, one essential
ingredient of happiness, besides the greater uncertainty of
manufacturing labour, arising from the capricious taste of man, the
accidents of war, and other causes.

It may be said, perhaps, that such an instance as I have supposed could
not occur, because the rise in the price of provisions would
immediately turn some additional capital into the channel of
agriculture. But this is an event which may take place very slowly, as
it should be remarked that a rise in the price of labour had preceded
the rise of provisions, and would, therefore, impede the good effects
upon agriculture, which the increased value of the produce of the land
might otherwise have occasioned.

It might also be said, that the additional capital of the nation would
enable it to import provisions sufficient for the maintenance of those
whom its stock could employ. A small country with a large navy, and
great inland accommodations for carriage, such as Holland, may, indeed,
import and distribute an effectual quantity of provisions; but the
price of provisions must be very high to make such an importation and
distribution answer in large countries less advantageously
circumstanced in this respect.

An instance, accurately such as I have supposed, may not, perhaps, ever
have occurred, but I have little doubt that instances nearly
approximating to it may be found without any very laborious search.
Indeed I am strongly inclined to think that England herself, since the
Revolution, affords a very striking elucidation of the argument in
question.

The commerce of this country, internal as well as external, has
certainly been rapidly advancing during the last century. The
exchangeable value in the market of Europe of the annual produce of its
land and labour has, without doubt, increased very considerably. But,
upon examination, it will be found that the increase has been chiefly
in the produce of labour and not in the produce of land, and therefore,
though the wealth of the nation has been advancing with a quick pace,
the effectual funds for the maintenance of labour have been increasing
very slowly, and the result is such as might be expected. The
increasing wealth of the nation has had little or no tendency to better
the condition of the labouring poor. They have not, I believe, a
greater command of the necessaries and conveniences of life, and a much
greater proportion of them than at the period of the Revolution is
employed in manufactures and crowded together in close and unwholesome
rooms.

Could we believe the statement of Dr Price that the population of
England has decreased since the Revolution, it would even appear that
the effectual funds for the maintenance of labour had been declining
during the progress of wealth in other respects. For I conceive that it
may be laid down as a general rule that if the effectual funds for the
maintenance of labour are increasing, that is, if the territory can
maintain as well as the stock employ a greater number of labourers,
this additional number will quickly spring up, even in spite of such
wars as Dr Price enumerates. And, consequently, if the population of
any country has been stationary, or declining, we may safely infer,
that, however it may have advanced in manufacturing wealth, its
effectual funds for the maintenance of labour cannot have increased.

It is difficult, however, to conceive that the population of England
has been declining since the Revolution, though every testimony concurs
to prove that its increase, if it has increased, has been very slow. In
the controversy which the question has occasioned, Dr Price undoubtedly
appears to be much more completely master of his subject, and to
possess more accurate information, than his opponents. Judging simply
from this controversy, I think one should say that Dr Price's point is
nearer being proved than Mr Howlett's. Truth, probably, lies between
the two statements, but this supposition makes the increase of
population since the Revolution to have been very slow in comparison
with the increase of wealth.

That the produce of the land has been decreasing, or even that it has
been absolutely stationary during the last century, few will be
disposed to believe. The enclosure of commons and waste lands certainly
tends to increase the food of the country, but it has been asserted
with confidence that the enclosure of common fields has frequently had
a contrary effect, and that large tracts of land which formerly
produced great quantities of corn, by being converted into pasture both
employ fewer hands and feed fewer mouths than before their enclosure.
It is, indeed, an acknowledged truth, that pasture land produces a
smaller quantity of human subsistence than corn land of the same
natural fertility, and could it be clearly ascertained that from the
increased demand for butchers' meat of the best quality, and its
increased price in consequence, a greater quantity of good land has
annually been employed in grazing, the diminution of human subsistence,
which this circumstance would occasion, might have counterbalanced the
advantages derived from the enclosure of waste lands, and the general
improvements in husbandry.

It scarcely need be remarked that the high price of butchers' meat at
present, and its low price formerly, were not caused by the scarcity in
the one case or the plenty in the other, but by the different expense
sustained at the different periods, in preparing cattle for the market.
It is, however, possible, that there might have been more cattle a
hundred years ago in the country than at present; but no doubt can be
entertained, that there is much more meat of a superior quality brought
to market at present than ever there was. When the price of butchers'
meat was very low, cattle were reared chiefly upon waste lands; and
except for some of the principal markets, were probably killed with but
little other fatting. The veal that is sold so cheap in some distant
counties at present bears little other resemblance than the name, to
that which is bought in London. Formerly, the price of butchers, meat
would not pay for rearing, and scarcely for feeding, cattle on land
that would answer in tillage; but the present price will not only pay
for fatting cattle on the very best land, but will even allow of the
rearing many, on land that would bear good crops of corn. The same
number of cattle, or even the same weight of cattle at the different
periods when killed, will have consumed (if I may be allowed the
expression) very different quantities of human substance. A fatted
beast may in some respects be considered, in the language of the French
economists, as an unproductive labourer: he has added nothing to the
value of the raw produce that he has consumed. The present system of
grating, undoubtedly tends more than the former system to diminish the
quantity of human subsistence in the country, in proportion to the
general fertility of the land.

I would not by any means be understood to say that the former system
either could or ought to have continued. The increasing price of
butchers' meat is a natural and inevitable consequence of the general
progress of cultivation; but I cannot help thinking, that the present
great demand for butchers' meat of the best quality, and the quantity
of good land that is in consequence annually employed to produce it,
together with the great number of horses at present kept for pleasure,
are the chief causes that have prevented the quantity of human food in
the country from keeping pace with the generally increased fertility of
the soil; and a change of custom in these respects would, I have little
doubt, have a very sensible effect on the quantity of subsistence in
the country, and consequently on its population.

The employment of much of the most fertile land in grating, the
improvements in agricultural instruments, the increase of large farms,
and particularly the diminution of the number of cottages throughout
the kingdom, all concur to prove, that there are not probably so many
persons employed in agricultural labour now as at the period of the
Revolution. Whatever increase of population, therefore, has taken
place, must be employed almost wholly in manufactures, and it is well
known that the failure of some of these manufactures, merely from the
caprice of fashion, such as the adoption of muslins instead of silks,
or of shoe-strings and covered buttons, instead of buckles and metal
buttons, combined with the restraints in the market of labour arising
from corporation and parish laws, have frequently driven thousands on
charity for support. The great increase of the poor rates is, indeed,
of itself a strong evidence that the poor have not a greater command of
the necessaries and conveniences of life, and if to the consideration,
that their condition in this respect is rather worse than better, be
added the circumstance, that a much greater proportion of them is
employed in large manufactories, unfavourable both to health and
virtue, it must be acknowledged, that the increase of wealth of late
years has had no tendency to increase the happiness of the labouring
poor.

That every increase of the stock or revenue of a nation cannot be
considered as an increase of the real funds for the maintenance of
labour and, therefore, cannot have the same good effect upon the
condition of the poor, will appear in a strong light if the argument be
applied to China.

Dr Adam Smith observes that China has probably long been as rich as the
nature of her laws and institutions will admit, but that with other
laws and institutions, and if foreign commerce were had in honour, she
might still be much richer. The question is, would such an increase of
wealth be an increase of the real funds for the maintenance of labour,
and consequently tend to place the lower classes of people in China in
a state of greater plenty?

It is evident, that if trade and foreign commerce were held in great
honour in China, from the plenty of labourers, and the cheapness of
labour, she might work up manufactures for foreign sale to an immense
amount. It is equally evident that from the great bulk of provisions
and the amazing extent of her inland territory she could not in return
import such a quantity as would be any sensible addition to the annual
stock of subsistence in the country. Her immense amount of
manufactures, therefore, she would exchange, chiefly, for luxuries
collected from all parts of the world. At present, it appears, that no
labour whatever is spared in the production of food. The country is
rather over-people in proportion to what its stock can employ, and
labour is, therefore, so abundant, that no pains are taken to abridge
it. The consequence of this is, probably, the greatest production of
food that the soil can possibly afford, for it will be generally
observed, that processes for abridging labour, though they may enable a
farmer to bring a certain quantity of grain cheaper to market, tend
rather to diminish than increase the whole produce; and in agriculture,
therefore, may, in some respects, be considered rather as private than
public advantages.

An immense capital could not be employed in China in preparing
manufactures for foreign trade without taking off so many labourers
from agriculture as to alter this state of things, and in some degree
to diminish the produce of the country. The demand for manufacturing
labourers would naturally raise the price of labour, but as the
quantity of subsistence would not be increased, the price of provisions
would keep pace with it, or even more than keep pace with it if the
quantity of provisions were really decreasing. The country would be
evidently advancing in wealth, the exchangeable value of the annual
produce of its land and labour would be annually augmented, yet the
real funds for the maintenance of labour would be stationary, or even
declining, and, consequently, the increasing wealth of the nation would
rather tend to depress than to raise the condition of the poor. With
regard to the command over the necessaries and comforts of life, they
would be in the same or rather worse state than before; and a great
part of them would have exchanged the healthy labours of agriculture
for the unhealthy occupations of manufacturing industry.

The argument, perhaps, appears clearer when applied to China, because
it is generally allowed that the wealth of China has been long
stationary. With regard to any other country it might be always a
matter of dispute at which of the two periods, compared, wealth was
increasing the fastest, as it is upon the rapidity of the increase of
wealth at any particular period that Dr Adam Smith says the condition
of the poor depends. It is evident, however, that two nations might
increase exactly with the same rapidity in the exchangeable value of
the annual produce of their land and labour, yet if one had applied
itself chiefly to agriculture, and the other chiefly to commerce, the
funds for the maintenance of labour, and consequently the effect of the
increase of wealth in each nation, would be extremely different. In
that which had applied itself chiefly to agriculture, the poor would
live in great plenty, and population would rapidly increase. In that
which had applied itself chiefly to commerce, the poor would be
comparatively but little benefited and consequently population would
increase slowly.




CHAPTER 17

Question of the proper definition of the wealth of a state--Reason
given by the French economists for considering all manufacturers as
unproductive labourers, not the true reason--The labour of artificers
and manufacturers sufficiently productive to individuals, though not to
the state--A remarkable passage in Dr Price's two volumes of
Observations--Error of Dr Price in attributing the happiness and rapid
population of America, chiefly, to its peculiar state of
civilization--No advantage can be expected from shutting our eyes to
the difficulties in the way to the improvement of society.


A question seems naturally to arise here whether the exchangeable value
of the annual produce of the land and labour be the proper definition
of the wealth of a country, or whether the gross produce of the land,
according to the French economists, may not be a more accurate
definition. Certain it is that every increase of wealth, according to
the definition of the economists, will be an increase of the funds for
the maintenance of labour, and consequently will always tend to
ameliorate the condition of the labouring poor, though an increase of
wealth, according to Dr Adam Smith's definition, will by no means
invariably have the same tendency. And yet it may not follow from this
consideration that Dr Adam Smith's definition is not just. It seems in
many respects improper to exclude the clothing and lodging of a whole
people from any part of their revenue. Much of it may, indeed, be of
very trivial and unimportant value in comparison with the food of the
country, yet still it may be fairly considered as a part of its
revenue; and, therefore, the only point in which I should differ from
Dr Adam Smith is where he seems to consider every increase of the
revenue or stock of a society as an increase of the funds for the
maintenance of labour, and consequently as tending always to ameliorate
the condition of the poor.

The fine silks and cottons, the laces, and other ornamental luxuries of
a rich country, may contribute very considerably to augment the
exchangeable value of its annual produce; yet they contribute but in a
very small degree to augment the mass of happiness in the society, and
it appears to me that it is with some view to the real utility of the
produce that we ought to estimate the productiveness or
unproductiveness of different sorts of labour. The French economists
consider all labour employed in manufactures as unproductive. Comparing
it with the labour employed upon land, I should be perfectly disposed
to agree with them, but not exactly for the reasons which they give.
They say that labour employed upon land is productive because the
produce, over and above completely paying the labourer and the farmer,
affords a clear rent to the landlord, and that the labour employed upon
a piece of lace is unproductive because it merely replaces the
provisions that the workman had consumed, and the stock of his
employer, without affording any clear rent whatever. But supposing the
value of the wrought lace to be such as that, besides paying in the
most complete manner the workman and his employer, it could afford a
clear rent to a third person, it appears to me that, in comparison with
the labour employed upon land, it would be still as unproductive as
ever. Though, according to the reasoning used by the French economists,
the man employed in the manufacture of lace would, in this case, seem
to be a productive labourer. Yet according to their definition of the
wealth of a state, he ought not to be considered in that light. He will
have added nothing to the gross produce of the land: he has consumed a
portion of this gross produce, and has left a bit of lace in return;
and though he may sell this bit of lace for three times the quantity of
provisions that he consumed whilst he was making it, and thus be a very
productive labourer with regard to himself, yet he cannot be considered
as having added by his labour to any essential part of the riches of
the state. The clear rent, therefore, that a certain produce can
afford, after paying the expenses of procuring it, does not appear to
be the sole criterion, by which to judge of the productiveness or
unproductiveness to a state of any particular species of labour.

Suppose that two hundred thousand men, who are now employed in
producing manufactures that only tend to gratify the vanity of a few
rich people, were to be employed upon some barren and uncultivated
lands, and to produce only half the quantity of food that they
themselves consumed; they would be still more productive labourers with
regard to the state than they were before, though their labour, so far
from affording a rent to a third person, would but half replace the
provisions used in obtaining the produce. In their former employment
they consumed a certain portion of the food of the country and left in
return some silks and laces. In their latter employment they consumed
the same quantity of food and left in return provision for a hundred
thousand men. There can be little doubt which of the two legacies would
be the most really beneficial to the country, and it will, I think, be
allowed that the wealth which supported the two hundred thousand men
while they were producing silks and laces would have been more usefully
employed in supporting them while they were producing the additional
quantity of food.

A capital employed upon land may be unproductive to the individual that
employs it and yet be highly productive to the society. A capital
employed in trade, on the contrary, may be highly productive to the
individual, and yet be almost totally unproductive to the society: and
this is the reason why I should call manufacturing labour unproductive,
in comparison of that which is employed in agriculture, and not for the
reason given by the French economists. It is, indeed, almost impossible
to see the great fortunes that are made in trade, and the liberality
with which so many merchants live, and yet agree in the statement of
the economists, that manufacturers can only grow rich by depriving
themselves of the funds destined for their support. In many branches of
trade the profits are so great as would allow of a clear rent to a
third person; but as there is no third person in the case, and as all
the profits centre in the master manufacturer, or merchant, he seems to
have a fair chance of growing rich, without much privation; and we
consequently see large fortunes acquired in trade by persons who have
not been remarked for their parsimony.

Daily experience proves that the labour employed in trade and
manufactures is sufficiently productive to individuals, but it
certainly is not productive in the same degree to the state. Every
accession to the food of a country tends to the immediate benefit of
the whole society; but the fortunes made in trade tend but in a remote
and uncertain manner to the same end, and in some respects have even a
contrary tendency. The home trade of consumption is by far the most
important trade of every nation. China is the richest country in the
world, without any other. Putting then, for a moment, foreign trade out
of the question, the man who, by an ingenious manufacture, obtains a
double portion out of the old stock of provisions, will certainly not
to be so useful to the state as the man who, by his labour, adds a
single share to the former stock. The consumable commodities of silks,
laces, trinkets, and expensive furniture, are undoubtedly a part of the
revenue of the society; but they are the revenue only of the rich, and
not of the society in general. An increase in this part of the revenue
of a state, cannot, therefore, be considered of the same importance as
an increase of food, which forms the principal revenue of the great
mass of the people.

Foreign commerce adds to the wealth of a state, according to Dr Adam
Smith's definition, though not according to the definition of the
economists. Its principal use, and the reason, probably, that it has in
general been held in such high estimation is that it adds greatly to
the external power of a nation or to its power of commanding the labour
of other countries; but it will be found, upon a near examination, to
contribute but little to the increase of the internal funds for the
maintenance of labour, and consequently but little to the happiness of
the greatest part of society. In the natural progress of a state
towards riches, manufactures, and foreign commerce would follow, in
their order, the high cultivation of the soil. In Europe, this natural
order of things has been inverted, and the soil has been cultivated
from the redundancy of manufacturing capital, instead of manufactures
rising from the redundancy of capital employed upon land. The superior
encouragement that has been given to the industry of the towns, and the
consequent higher price that is paid for the labour of artificers than
for the labour of those employed in husbandry, are probably the reasons
why so much soil in Europe remains uncultivated. Had a different policy
been pursued throughout Europe, it might undoubtedly have been much
more populous than at present, and yet not be more incumbered by its
population.

I cannot quit this curious subject of the difficulty arising from
population, a subject that appears to me to deserve a minute
investigation and able discussion much beyond my power to give it,
without taking notice of an extraordinary passage in Dr Price's two
volumes of Observations. Having given some tables on the probabilities
of life, in towns and in the country, he says (Vol. II, p. 243):

From this comparison, it appears with how much truth great cities have
been called the graves of mankind. It must also convince all who
consider it, that according to the observation, at the end of the
fourth essay, in the former volume, it is by no means strictly proper
to consider our diseases as the original intention of nature. They are,
without doubt, in general our own creation. Were there a country where
the inhabitants led lives entirely natural and virtuous, few of them
would die without measuring out the whole period of present existence
allotted to them; pain and distemper would be unknown among them, and
death would come upon them like a sleep, in consequence of no other
cause than gradual and unavoidable decay.

I own that I felt myself obliged to draw a very opposite conclusion
from the facts advanced in Dr Price's two volumes. I had for some time
been aware that population and food increased in different ratios, and
a vague opinion had been floating in my mind that they could only be
kept equal by some species of misery or vice, but the perusal of Dr
Price's two volumes of Observations, after that opinion had been
conceived, raised it at once to conviction. With so many facts in his
view to prove the extraordinary rapidity with which population
increases when unchecked, and with such a body of evidence before him
to elucidate even the manner by which the general laws of nature
repress a redundant population, it is perfectly inconceivable to me how
he could write the passage that I have quoted. He was a strenuous
advocate for early marriages, as the best preservative against vicious
manners. He had no fanciful conceptions about the extinction of the
passion between the sexes, like Mr Godwin, nor did he ever think of
eluding the difficulty in the ways hinted at by Mr Condorcet. He
frequently talks of giving the prolifick powers of nature room to exert
themselves. Yet with these ideas, that his understanding could escape
from the obvious and necessary inference that an unchecked population
would increase, beyond comparison, faster than the earth, by the best
directed exertions of man, could produce food for its support, appears
to me as astonishing as if he had resisted the conclusion of one of the
plainest propositions of Euclid.

Dr Price, speaking of the different stages of the civilized state,
says, 'The first, or simple stages of civilization, are those which
favour most the increase and the happiness of mankind.' He then
instances the American colonies, as being at that time in the first and
happiest of the states that he had described, and as affording a very
striking proof of the effects of the different stages of civilization
on population. But he does not seem to be aware that the happiness of
the Americans depended much less upon their peculiar degree of
civilization than upon the peculiarity of their situation, as new
colonies, upon their having a great plenty of fertile uncultivated
land. In parts of Norway, Denmark, or Sweden, or in this country, two
or three hundred years ago, he might have found perhaps nearly the same
degree of civilization, but by no means the same happiness or the same
increase of population. He quotes himself a statute of Henry the
Eighth, complaining of the decay of tillage, and the enhanced price of
provisions, 'whereby a marvellous number of people were rendered
incapable of maintaining themselves and families.' The superior degree
of civil liberty which prevailed in America contributed, without doubt,
its share to promote the industry, happiness, and population of these
states, but even civil liberty, all powerful as it is, will not create
fresh land. The Americans may be said, perhaps, to enjoy a greater
degree of civil liberty, now they are an independent people, than while
they were in subjection in England, but we may be perfectly sure that
population will not long continue to increase with the same rapidity as
it did then.

A person who contemplated the happy state of the lower classes of
people in America twenty years ago would naturally wish to retain them
for ever in that state, and might think, perhaps, that by preventing
the introduction of manufactures and luxury he might effect his
purpose, but he might as reasonably expect to prevent a wife or
mistress from growing old by never exposing her to the sun or air. The
situation of new colonies, well governed, is a bloom of youth that no
efforts can arrest. There are, indeed, many modes of treatment in the
political, as well as animal, body, that contribute to accelerate or
<DW44> the approaches of age, but there can be no chance of success, in
any mode that could be devised, for keeping either of them in perpetual
youth. By encouraging the industry of the towns more than the industry
of the country, Europe may be said, perhaps, to have brought on a
premature old age. A different policy in this respect would infuse
fresh life and vigour into every state. While from the law of
primogeniture, and other European customs, land bears a monopoly price,
a capital can never be employed in it with much advantage to the
individual; and, therefore, it is not probable that the soil should be
properly cultivated. And, though in every civilized state a class of
proprietors and a class of labourers must exist, yet one permanent
advantage would always result from a nearer equalization of property.
The greater the number of proprietors, the smaller must be the number
of labourers: a greater part of society would be in the happy state of
possessing property: and a smaller part in the unhappy state of
possessing no other property than their labour. But the best directed
exertions, though they may alleviate, can never remove the pressure of
want, and it will be difficult for any person who contemplates the
genuine situation of man on earth, and the general laws of nature, to
suppose it possible that any, the most enlightened, efforts could place
mankind in a state where 'few would die without measuring out the whole
period of present existence allotted to them; where pain and distemper
would be unknown among them; and death would come upon them like a
sleep, in consequence of no other cause than gradual and unavoidable
decay.'

It is, undoubtedly, a most disheartening reflection that the great
obstacle in the way to any extraordinary improvement in society is of a
nature that we can never hope to overcome. The perpetual tendency in
the race of man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is one of
the general laws of animated nature which we can have no reason to
expect will change. Yet, discouraging as the contemplation of this
difficulty must be to those whose exertions are laudably directed to
the improvement of the human species, it is evident that no possible
good can arise from any endeavours to slur it over or keep it in the
background. On the contrary, the most baleful mischiefs may be expected
from the unmanly conduct of not daring to face truth because it is
unpleasing. Independently of what relates to this great obstacle,
sufficient yet remains to be done for mankind to animate us to the most
unremitted exertion. But if we proceed without a thorough knowledge and
accurate comprehension of the nature, extent, and magnitude of the
difficulties we have to encounter, or if we unwisely direct our efforts
towards an object in which we cannot hope for success, we shall not
only exhaust our strength in fruitless exertions and remain at as great
a distance as ever from the summit of our wishes, but we shall be
perpetually crushed by the recoil of this rock of Sisyphus.




CHAPTER 18

The constant pressure of distress on man, from the principle of
population, seems to direct our hopes to the future--State of trial
inconsistent with our ideas of the foreknowledge of God--The world,
probably, a mighty process for awakening matter into mind--Theory of
the formation of mind--Excitements from the wants of the
body--Excitements from the operation of general laws--Excitements from
the difficulties of life arising from the principle of population.


The view of human life which results from the contemplation of the
constant pressure of distress on man from the difficulty of
subsistence, by shewing the little expectation that he can reasonably
entertain of perfectibility on earth, seems strongly to point his hopes
to the future. And the temptations to which he must necessarily be
exposed, from the operation of those laws of nature which we have been
examining, would seem to represent the world in the light in which it
has been frequently considered, as a state of trial and school of
virtue preparatory to a superior state of happiness. But I hope I shall
be pardoned if I attempt to give a view in some degree different of the
situation of man on earth, which appears to me to be more consistent
with the various phenomena of nature which we observe around us and
more consonant to our ideas of the power, goodness, and foreknowledge
of the Deity.

It cannot be considered as an unimproving exercise of the human mind to
endeavour to 'vindicate the ways of God to man' if we proceed with a
proper distrust of our own understandings and a just sense of our
insufficiency to comprehend the reason of all we see, if we hail every
ray of light with gratitude, and, when no light appears, think that the
darkness is from within and not from without, and bow with humble
deference to the supreme wisdom of him whose 'thoughts are above our
thoughts' 'as the heavens are high above the earth.'

In all our feeble attempts, however, to 'find out the Almighty to
perfection', it seems absolutely necessary that we should reason from
nature up to nature's God and not presume to reason from God to nature.
The moment we allow ourselves to ask why some things are not otherwise,
instead of endeavouring to account for them as they are, we shall never
know where to stop, we shall be led into the grossest and most childish
absurdities, all progress in the knowledge of the ways of Providence
must necessarily be at an end, and the study will even cease to be an
improving exercise of the human mind. Infinite power is so vast and
incomprehensible an idea that the mind of man must necessarily be
bewildered in the contemplation of it. With the crude and puerile
conceptions which we sometimes form of this attribute of the Deity, we
might imagine that God could call into being myriads and myriads of
existences, all free from pain and imperfection, all eminent in
goodness and wisdom, all capable of the highest enjoyments, and
unnumbered as the points throughout infinite space. But when from these
vain and extravagant dreams of fancy, we turn our eyes to the book of
nature, where alone we can read God as he is, we see a constant
succession of sentient beings, rising apparently from so many specks of
matter, going through a long and sometimes painful process in this
world, but many of them attaining, ere the termination of it, such high
qualities and powers as seem to indicate their fitness for some
superior state. Ought we not then to correct our crude and puerile
ideas of infinite Power from the contemplation of what we actually see
existing? Can we judge of the Creator but from his creation? And,
unless we wish to exalt the power of God at the expense of his
goodness, ought we not to conclude that even to the great Creator,
almighty as he is, a certain process may be necessary, a certain time
(or at least what appears to us as time) may be requisite, in order to
form beings with those exalted qualities of mind which will fit them
for his high purposes?

A state of trial seems to imply a previously formed existence that does
not agree with the appearance of man in infancy and indicates something
like suspicion and want of foreknowledge, inconsistent with those ideas
which we wish to cherish of the Supreme Being. I should be inclined,
therefore, as I have hinted before, to consider the world and this life
as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation
and formation of mind, a process necessary to awaken inert, chaotic
matter into spirit, to sublimate the dust of the earth into soul, to
elicit an ethereal spark from the clod of clay. And in this view of the
subject, the various impressions and excitements which man receives
through life may be considered as the forming hand of his Creator,
acting by general laws, and awakening his sluggish existence, by the
animating touches of the Divinity, into a capacity of superior
enjoyment. The original sin of man is the torpor and corruption of the
chaotic matter in which he may be said to be born.

It could answer no good purpose to enter into the question whether mind
be a distinct substance from matter, or only a finer form of it. The
question is, perhaps, after all, a question merely of words. Mind is as
essentially mind, whether formed from matter or any other substance. We
know from experience that soul and body are most intimately united, and
every appearance seems to indicate that they grow from infancy
together. It would be a supposition attended with very little
probability to believe that a complete and full formed spirit existed
in every infant, but that it was clogged and impeded in its operations
during the first twenty years of life by the weakness, or hebetude, of
the organs in which it was enclosed. As we shall all be disposed to
agree that God is the creator of mind as well as of body, and as they
both seem to be forming and unfolding themselves at the same time, it
cannot appear inconsistent either with reason or revelation, if it
appear to be consistent with phenomena of nature, to suppose that God
is constantly occupied in forming mind out of matter and that the
various impressions that man receives through life is the process for
that purpose. The employment is surely worthy of the highest attributes
of the Deity.

This view of the state of man on earth will not seem to be unattended
with probability, if, judging from the little experience we have of the
nature of mind, it shall appear upon investigation that the phenomena
around us, and the various events of human life, seem peculiarly
calculated to promote this great end, and especially if, upon this
supposition, we can account, even to our own narrow understandings, for
many of those roughnesses and inequalities in life which querulous man
too frequently makes the subject of his complaint against the God of
nature.

The first great awakeners of the mind seem to be the wants of the body.
(It was my intention to have entered at some length into this subject
as a kind of second part to the Essay. A long interruption, from
particular business, has obliged me to lay aside this intention, at
least for the present. I shall now, therefore, only give a sketch of a
few of the leading circumstances that appear to me to favour the
general supposition that I have advanced.) They are the first
stimulants that rouse the brain of infant man into sentient activity,
and such seems to be the sluggishness of original matter that unless by
a peculiar course of excitements other wants, equally powerful, are
generated, these stimulants seem, even afterwards, to be necessary to
continue that activity which they first awakened. The savage would
slumber for ever under his tree unless he were roused from his torpor
by the cravings of hunger or the pinchings of cold, and the exertions
that he makes to avoid these evils, by procuring food, and building
himself a covering, are the exercises which form and keep in motion his
faculties, which otherwise would sink into listless inactivity. From
all that experience has taught us concerning the structure of the human
mind, if those stimulants to exertion which arise from the wants of the
body were removed from the mass of mankind, we have much more reason to
think that they would be sunk to the level of brutes, from a deficiency
of excitements, than that they would be raised to the rank of
philosophers by the possession of leisure. In those countries where
nature is the most redundant in spontaneous produce the inhabitants
will not be found the most remarkable for acuteness of intellect.
Necessity has been with great truth called the mother of invention.
Some of the noblest exertions of the human mind have been set in motion
by the necessity of satisfying the wants of the body. Want has not
unfrequently given wings to the imagination of the poet, pointed the
flowing periods of the historian, and added acuteness to the researches
of the philosopher, and though there are undoubtedly many minds at
present so far improved by the various excitements of knowledge, or of
social sympathy, that they would not relapse into listlessness if their
bodily stimulants were removed, yet it can scarcely be doubted that
these stimulants could not be withdrawn from the mass of mankind
without producing a general and fatal torpor, destructive of all the
germs of future improvement.

Locke, if I recollect, says that the endeavour to avoid pain rather
than the pursuit of pleasure is the great stimulus to action in life:
and that in looking to any particular pleasure, we shall not be roused
into action in order to obtain it, till the contemplation of it has
continued so long as to amount to a sensation of pain or uneasiness
under the absence of it. To avoid evil and to pursue good seem to be
the great duty and business of man, and this world appears to be
peculiarly calculated to afford opportunity of the most unremitted
exertion of this kind, and it is by this exertion, by these stimulants,
that mind is formed. If Locke's idea be just, and there is great reason
to think that it is, evil seems to be necessary to create exertion, and
exertion seems evidently necessary to create mind.

The necessity of food for the support of life gives rise, probably, to
a greater quantity of exertion than any other want, bodily or mental.
The Supreme Being has ordained that the earth shall not produce good in
great quantities till much preparatory labour and ingenuity has been
exercised upon its surface. There is no conceivable connection to our
comprehensions, between the seed and the plant or tree that rises from
it. The Supreme Creator might, undoubtedly, raise up plants of all
kinds, for the use of his creatures, without the assistance of those
little bits of matter, which we call seed, or even without the
assisting labour and attention of man. The processes of ploughing and
clearing the ground, of collecting and sowing seeds, are not surely for
the assistance of God in his creation, but are made previously
necessary to the enjoyment of the blessings of life, in order to rouse
man into action, and form his mind to reason.

To furnish the most unremitted excitements of this kind, and to urge
man to further the gracious designs of Providence by the full
cultivation of the earth, it has been ordained that population should
increase much faster than food. This general law (as it has appeared in
the former parts of this Essay) undoubtedly produces much partial evil,
but a little reflection may, perhaps, satisfy us, that it produces a
great overbalance of good. Strong excitements seem necessary to create
exertion, and to direct this exertion, and form the reasoning faculty,
it seems absolutely necessary, that the Supreme Being should act always
according to general laws. The constancy of the laws of nature, or the
certainty with which we may expect the same effects from the same
causes, is the foundation of the faculty of reason. If in the ordinary
course of things, the finger of God were frequently visible, or to
speak more correctly, if God were frequently to change his purpose (for
the finger of God is, indeed, visible in every blade of grass that we
see), a general and fatal torpor of the human faculties would probably
ensue; even the bodily wants of mankind would cease to stimulate them
to exertion, could they not reasonably expect that if their efforts
were well directed they would be crowned with success. The constancy of
the laws of nature is the foundation of the industry and foresight of
the husbandman, the indefatigable ingenuity of the artificer, the
skilful researches of the physician and anatomist, and the watchful
observation and patient investigation of the natural philosopher. To
this constancy we owe all the greatest and noblest efforts of
intellect. To this constancy we owe the immortal mind of a Newton.

As the reasons, therefore, for the constancy of the laws of nature
seem, even to our understandings, obvious and striking; if we return to
the principle of population and consider man as he really is, inert,
sluggish, and averse from labour, unless compelled by necessity (and it
is surely the height of folly to talk of man, according to our crude
fancies of what he might be), we may pronounce with certainty that the
world would not have been peopled, but for the superiority of the power
of population to the means of subsistence. Strong and constantly
operative as this stimulus is on man to urge him to the cultivation of
the earth, if we still see that cultivation proceeds very slowly, we
may fairly conclude that a less stimulus would have been insufficient.
Even under the operation of this constant excitement, savages will
inhabit countries of the greatest natural fertility for a long period
before they betake themselves to pasturage or agriculture. Had
population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that
man might never have emerged from the savage state. But supposing the
earth once well peopled, an Alexander, a Julius Caesar, a Tamberlane,
or a bloody revolution might irrecoverably thin the human race, and
defeat the great designs of the Creator. The ravages of a contagious
disorder would be felt for ages; and an earthquake might unpeople a
region for ever. The principle, according to which population
increases, prevents the vices of mankind, or the accidents of nature,
the partial evils arising from general laws, from obstructing the high
purpose of the creation. It keeps the inhabitants of the earth always
fully up to the level of the means of subsistence; and is constantly
acting upon man as a powerful stimulus, urging him to the further
cultivation of the earth, and to enable it, consequently, to support a
more extended population. But it is impossible that this law can
operate, and produce the effects apparently intended by the Supreme
Being, without occasioning partial evil. Unless the principle of
population were to be altered according to the circumstances of each
separate country (which would not only be contrary to our universal
experience, with regard to the laws of nature, but would contradict
even our own reason, which sees the absolute necessity of general laws
for the formation of intellect), it is evident that the same principle
which, seconded by industry, will people a fertile region in a few
years must produce distress in countries that have been long inhabited.

It seems, however, every way probable that even the acknowledged
difficulties occasioned by the law of population tend rather to promote
than impede the general purpose of Providence. They excite universal
exertion and contribute to that infinite variety of situations, and
consequently of impressions, which seems upon the whole favourable to
the growth of mind. It is probable, that too great or too little
excitement, extreme poverty, or too great riches may be alike
unfavourable in this respect. The middle regions of society seem to be
best suited to intellectual improvement, but it is contrary to the
analogy of all nature to expect that the whole of society can be a
middle region. The temperate zones of the earth seem to be the most
favourable to the mental and corporal energies of man, but all cannot
be temperate zones. A world, warmed and enlightened but by one sun,
must from the laws of matter have some parts chilled by perpetual
frosts and others scorched by perpetual heats. Every piece of matter
lying on a surface must have an upper and an under side, all the
particles cannot be in the middle. The most valuable parts of an oak,
to a timber merchant, are not either the roots or the branches, but
these are absolutely necessary to the existence of the middle part, or
stem, which is the object in request. The timber merchant could not
possibly expect to make an oak grow without roots or branches, but if
he could find out a mode of cultivation which would cause more of the
substance to go to stem, and less to root and branch, he would be right
to exert himself in bringing such a system into general use.

In the same manner, though we cannot possibly expect to exclude riches
and poverty from society, yet if we could find out a mode of government
by which the numbers in the extreme regions would be lessened and the
numbers in the middle regions increased, it would be undoubtedly our
duty to adopt it. It is not, however, improbable that as in the oak,
the roots and branches could not be diminished very greatly without
weakening the vigorous circulation of the sap in the stem, so in
society the extreme parts could not be diminished beyond a certain
degree without lessening that animated exertion throughout the middle
parts, which is the very cause that they are the most favourable to the
growth of intellect. If no man could hope to rise or fear to fall, in
society, if industry did not bring with it its reward and idleness its
punishment, the middle parts would not certainly be what they now are.
In reasoning upon this subject, it is evident that we ought to consider
chiefly the mass of mankind and not individual instances. There are
undoubtedly many minds, and there ought to be many, according to the
chances out of so great a mass, that, having been vivified early by a
peculiar course of excitements, would not need the constant action of
narrow motives to continue them in activity. But if we were to review
the various useful discoveries, the valuable writings, and other
laudable exertions of mankind, I believe we should find that more were
to be attributed to the narrow motives that operate upon the many than
to the apparently more enlarged motives that operate upon the few.

Leisure is, without doubt, highly valuable to man, but taking man as he
is, the probability seems to be that in the greater number of instances
it will produce evil rather than good. It has been not infrequently
remarked that talents are more common among younger brothers than among
elder brothers, but it can scarcely be imagined that younger brothers
are, upon an average, born with a greater original susceptibility of
parts. The difference, if there really is any observable difference,
can only arise from their different situations. Exertion and activity
are in general absolutely necessary in one case and are only optional
in the other.

That the difficulties of life contribute to generate talents, every
day's experience must convince us. The exertions that men find it
necessary to make, in order to support themselves or families,
frequently awaken faculties that might otherwise have lain for ever
dormant, and it has been commonly remarked that new and extraordinary
situations generally create minds adequate to grapple with the
difficulties in which they are involved.




CHAPTER 19

The sorrows of life necessary to soften and humanize the heart--The
excitement of social sympathy often produce characters of a higher
order than the mere possessors of talents--Moral evil probably
necessary to the production of moral excellence--Excitements from
intellectual wants continually kept up by the infinite variety of
nature, and the obscurity that involves metaphysical subjects--The
difficulties in revelation to be accounted for upon this principle--The
degree of evidence which the scriptures contain, probably, best suited
to the improvements of the human faculties, and the moral amelioration
of mankind--The idea that mind is created by excitements seems to
account for the existence of natural and moral evil.


The sorrows and distresses of life form another class of excitements,
which seem to be necessary, by a peculiar train of impressions, to
soften and humanize the heart, to awaken social sympathy, to generate
all the Christian virtues, and to afford scope for the ample exertion
of benevolence. The general tendency of an uniform course of prosperity
is rather to degrade than exalt the character. The heart that has never
known sorrow itself will seldom be feelingly alive to the pains and
pleasures, the wants and wishes, of its fellow beings. It will seldom
be overflowing with that warmth of brotherly love, those kind and
amiable affections, which dignify the human character even more than
the possession of the highest talents. Talents, indeed, though
undoubtedly a very prominent and fine feature of mind, can by no means
be considered as constituting the whole of it. There are many minds
which have not been exposed to those excitements that usually form
talents, that have yet been vivified to a high degree by the
excitements of social sympathy. In every rank of life, in the lowest as
frequently as in the highest, characters are to be found overflowing
with the milk of human kindness, breathing love towards God and man,
and, though without those peculiar powers of mind called talents,
evidently holding a higher rank in the scale of beings than many who
possess them. Evangelical charity, meekness, piety, and all that class
of virtues distinguished particularly by the name of Christian virtues
do not seem necessarily to include abilities; yet a soul possessed of
these amiable qualities, a soul awakened and vivified by these
delightful sympathies, seems to hold a nearer commerce with the skies
than mere acuteness of intellect.

The greatest talents have been frequently misapplied and have produced
evil proportionate to the extent of their powers. Both reason and
revelation seem to assure us that such minds will be condemned to
eternal death, but while on earth, these vicious instruments performed
their part in the great mass of impressions, by the disgust and
abhorrence which they excited. It seems highly probable that moral evil
is absolutely necessary to the production of moral excellence. A being
with only good placed in view may be justly said to be impelled by a
blind necessity. The pursuit of good in this case can be no indication
of virtuous propensities. It might be said, perhaps, that infinite
Wisdom cannot want such an indication as outward action, but would
foreknow with certainly whether the being would choose good or evil.
This might be a plausible argument against a state of trial, but will
not hold against the supposition that mind in this world is in a state
of formation. Upon this idea, the being that has seen moral evil and
has felt disapprobation and disgust at it is essentially different from
the being that has seen only good. They are pieces of clay that have
received distinct impressions: they must, therefore, necessarily be in
different shapes; or, even if we allow them both to have the same
lovely form of virtue, it must be acknowledged that one has undergone
the further process, necessary to give firmness and durability to its
substance, while the other is still exposed to injury, and liable to be
broken by every accidental impulse. An ardent love and admiration of
virtue seems to imply the existence of something opposite to it, and it
seems highly probable that the same beauty of form and substance, the
same perfection of character, could not be generated without the
impressions of disapprobation which arise from the spectacle of moral
evil.

When the mind has been awakened into activity by the passions, and the
wants of the body, intellectual wants arise; and the desire of
knowledge, and the impatience under ignorance, form a new and important
class of excitements. Every part of nature seems peculiarly calculated
to furnish stimulants to mental exertion of this kind, and to offer
inexhaustible food for the most unremitted inquiry. Our mortal Bard
says of Cleopatra:

  Custom cannot stale
  Her infinite variety.

The expression, when applied to any one object, may be considered as a
poetical amplification, but it is accurately true when applied to
nature. Infinite variety seems, indeed, eminently her characteristic
feature. The shades that are here and there blended in the picture give
spirit, life, and prominence to her exuberant beauties, and those
roughnesses and inequalities, those inferior parts that support the
superior, though they sometimes offend the fastidious microscopic eye
of short-sighted man, contribute to the symmetry, grace, and fair
proportion of the whole.

The infinite variety of the forms and operations of nature, besides
tending immediately to awaken and improve the mind by the variety of
impressions that it creates, opens other fertile sources of improvement
by offering so wide and extensive a field for investigation and
research. Uniform, undiversified perfection could not possess the same
awakening powers. When we endeavour then to contemplate the system of
the universe, when we think of the stars as the suns of other systems
scattered throughout infinite space, when we reflect that we do not
probably see a millionth part of those bright orbs that are beaming
light and life to unnumbered worlds, when our minds, unable to grasp
the immeasurable conception, sink, lost and confounded, in admiration
at the mighty incomprehensible power of the Creator, let us not
querulously complain that all climates are not equally genial, that
perpetual spring does not reign throughout the year, that God's
creatures do not possess the same advantages, that clouds and tempests
sometimes darken the natural world and vice and misery the moral world,
and that all the works of the creation are not formed with equal
perfection. Both reason and experience seem to indicate to us that the
infinite variety of nature (and variety cannot exist without inferior
parts, or apparent blemishes) is admirably adapted to further the high
purpose of the creation and to produce the greatest possible quantity
of good.

The obscurity that involves all metaphysical subjects appears to me, in
the same manner, peculiarly calculated to add to that class of
excitements which arise from the thirst of knowledge. It is probable
that man, while on earth, will never be able to attain complete
satisfaction on these subjects; but this is by no means a reason that
he should not engage in them. The darkness that surrounds these
interesting topics of human curiosity may be intended to furnish
endless motives to intellectual activity and exertion. The constant
effort to dispel this darkness, even if it fail of success, invigorates
and improves the thinking faculty. If the subjects of human inquiry
were once exhausted, mind would probably stagnate; but the infinitely
diversified forms and operations of nature, together with the endless
food for speculation which metaphysical subjects offer, prevent the
possibility that such a period should ever arrive.

It is by no means one of the wisest sayings of Solomon that 'there is
no new thing under the sun.' On the contrary, it is probable that were
the present system to continue for millions of years, continual
additions would be making to the mass of human knowledge, and yet,
perhaps, it may be a matter of doubt whether what may be called the
capacity of mind be in any marked and decided manner increasing. A
Socrates, a Plato, or an Aristotle, however confessedly inferior in
knowledge to the philosophers of the present day, do not appear to have
been much below them in intellectual capacity. Intellect rises from a
speck, continues in vigour only for a certain period, and will not
perhaps admit while on earth of above a certain number of impressions.
These impressions may, indeed, be infinitely modified, and from these
various modifications, added probably to a difference in the
susceptibility of the original germs, arise the endless diversity of
character that we see in the world; but reason and experience seem both
to assure us that the capacity of individual minds does not increase in
proportion to the mass of existing knowledge. (It is probable that no
two grains of wheat are exactly alike. Soil undoubtedly makes the
principal difference in the blades that spring up, but probably not
all. It seems natural to suppose some sort of difference in the
original germs that are afterwards awakened into thought, and the
extraordinary difference of susceptibility in very young children seems
to confirm the supposition.)

The finest minds seem to be formed rather by efforts at original
thinking, by endeavours to form new combinations, and to discover new
truths, than by passively receiving the impressions of other men's
ideas. Could we suppose the period arrived, when there was not further
hope of future discoveries, and the only employment of mind was to
acquire pre-existing knowledge, without any efforts to form new and
original combinations, though the mass of human knowledge were a
thousand times greater than it is at present, yet it is evident that
one of the noblest stimulants to mental exertion would have ceased; the
finest feature of intellect would be lost; everything allied to genius
would be at an end; and it appears to be impossible, that, under such
circumstances, any individuals could possess the same intellectual
energies as were possessed by a Locke, a Newton, or a Shakespeare, or
even by a Socrates, a Plato, an Aristotle or a Homer.

If a revelation from heaven of which no person could feel the smallest
doubt were to dispel the mists that now hang over metaphysical
subjects, were to explain the nature and structure of mind, the
affections and essences of all substances, the mode in which the
Supreme Being operates in the works of the creation, and the whole plan
and scheme of the Universe, such an accession of knowledge so obtained,
instead of giving additional vigour and activity to the human mind,
would in all probability tend to repress future exertion and to damp
the soaring wings of intellect.

For this reason I have never considered the doubts and difficulties
that involve some parts of the sacred writings as any ardent against
their divine original. The Supreme Being might, undoubtedly, have
accompanied his revelations to man by such a succession of miracles,
and of such a nature, as would have produced universal overpowering
conviction and have put an end at once to all hesitation and
discussion. But weak as our reason is to comprehend the plans of the
great Creator, it is yet sufficiently strong to see the most striking
objections to such a revelation. From the little we know of the
structure of the human understanding, we must be convinced that an
overpowering conviction of this kind, instead of tending to the
improvement and moral amelioration of man, would act like the touch of
a torpedo on all intellectual exertion and would almost put an end to
the existence of virtue. If the scriptural denunciations of eternal
punishment were brought home with the same certainty to every man's
mind as that the night will follow the day, this one vast and gloomy
idea would take such full possession of the human faculties as to leave
no room for any other conceptions, the external actions of men would be
all nearly alike, virtuous conduct would be no indication of virtuous
disposition, vice and virtue would be blended together in one common
mass, and though the all-seeing eye of God might distinguish them they
must necessarily make the same impressions on man, who can judge only
from external appearances. Under such a dispensation, it is difficult
to conceive how human beings could be formed to a detestation of moral
evil, and a love and admiration of God, and of moral excellence.

Our ideas of virtue and vice are not, perhaps, very accurate and
well-defined; but few, I think, would call an action really virtuous
which was performed simply and solely from the dread of a very great
punishment or the expectation of a very great reward. The fear of the
Lord is very justly said to be the beginning of wisdom, but the end of
wisdom is the love of the Lord and the admiration of moral good. The
denunciations of future punishment contained in the scriptures seem to
be well calculated to arrest the progress of the vicious and awaken the
attention of the careless, but we see from repeated experience that
they are not accompanied with evidence of such a nature as to overpower
the human will and to make men lead virtuous lives with vicious
dispositions, merely from a dread of hereafter. A genuine faith, by
which I mean a faith that shews itself in it the virtues of a truly
Christian life, may generally be considered as an indication of an
amiable and virtuous disposition, operated upon more by love than by
pure unmixed fear.

When we reflect on the temptations to which man must necessarily be
exposed in this world, from the structure of his frame, and the
operation of the laws of nature, and the consequent moral certainty
that many vessels will come out of this mighty creative furnace in
wrong shapes, it is perfectly impossible to conceive that any of these
creatures of God's hand can be condemned to eternal suffering. Could we
once admit such an idea, it our natural conceptions of goodness and
justice would be completely overthrown, and we could no longer look up
to God as a merciful and righteous Being. But the doctrine of life and
Mortality which was brought to light by the gospel, the doctrine that
the end of righteousness is everlasting life, but that the wages of sin
are death, is in every respect just and merciful, and worthy of the
great Creator. Nothing can appear more consonant to our reason than
that those beings which come out of the creative process of the world
in lovely and beautiful forms should be crowned with immortality, while
those which come out misshapen, those whose minds are not suited to a
purer and happier state of existence, should perish and be condemned to
mix again with their original clay. Eternal condemnation of this kind
may be considered as a species of eternal punishment, and it is not
wonderful that it should be represented, sometimes, under images of
suffering. But life and death, salvation and destruction, are more
frequently opposed to each other in the New Testament than happiness
and misery. The Supreme Being would appear to us in a very different
view if we were to consider him as pursuing the creatures that had
offended him with eternal hate and torture, instead of merely
condemning to their original insensibility those beings that, by the
operation of general laws, had not been formed with qualities suited to
a purer state of happiness.

Life is, generally speaking, a blessing independent of a future state.
It is a gift which the vicious would not always be ready to throw away,
even if they had no fear of death. The partial pain, therefore, that is
inflicted by the supreme Creator, while he is forming numberless beings
to a capacity of the highest enjoyments, is but as the dust of the
balance in comparison of the happiness that is communicated, and we
have every reason to think that there is no more evil in the world than
what is absolutely necessary as one of the ingredients in the mighty
process.

The striking necessity of general laws for the formation of intellect
will not in any respect be contradicted by one or two exceptions, and
these evidently not intended for partial purposes, but calculated to
operate upon a great part of mankind, and through many ages. Upon the
idea that I have given of the formation of mind, the infringement of
the general law of nature, by a divine revelation, will appear in the
light of the immediate hand of God mixing new ingredients in the mighty
mass, suited to the particular state of the process, and calculated to
give rise to a new and powerful train of impressions, tending to
purify, exalt, and improve the human mind. The miracles that
accompanied these revelations when they had once excited the attention
of mankind, and rendered it a matter of most interesting discussion,
whether the doctrine was from God or man, had performed their part, had
answered the purpose of the Creator, and these communications of the
divine will were afterwards left to make their way by their own
intrinsic excellence; and, by operating as moral motives, gradually to
influence and improve, and not to overpower and stagnate the faculties
of man.

It would be, undoubtedly, presumptuous to say that the Supreme Being
could not possibly have effected his purpose in any other way than that
which he has chosen, but as the revelation of the divine will which we
possess is attended with some doubts and difficulties, and as our
reason points out to us the strongest objections to a revelation which
would force immediate, implicit, universal belief, we have surely just
cause to think that these doubts and difficulties are no argument
against the divine origin of the scriptures, and that the species of
evidence which they possess is best suited to the improvement of the
human faculties and the moral amelioration of mankind.

The idea that the impressions and excitements of this world are the
instruments with which the Supreme Being forms matter into mind, and
that the necessity of constant exertion to avoid evil and to pursue
good is the principal spring of these impressions and excitements,
seems to smooth many of the difficulties that occur in a contemplation
of human life, and appears to me to give a satisfactory reason for the
existence of natural and moral evil, and, consequently, for that part
of both, and it certainly is not a very small part, which arises from
the principle of population. But, though, upon this supposition, it
seems highly improbable that evil should ever be removed from the
world; yet it is evident that this impression would not answer the
apparent purpose of the Creator; it would not act so powerfully as an
excitement to exertion, if the quantity of it did not diminish or
increase with the activity or the indolence of man. The continual
variations in the weight and in the distribution of this pressure keep
alive a constant expectation of throwing it off.

  "Hope springs eternal in the Human breast,
  Man never is, but always to be blest."

Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity. We are not
patiently to submit to it, but to exert ourselves to avoid it. It is
not only the interest but the duty of every individual to use his
utmost efforts to remove evil from himself and from as large a circle
as he can influence, and the more he exercises himself in this duty,
the more wisely he directs his efforts, and the more successful these
efforts are; the more he will probably improve and exalt his own mind,
and the more completely does he appear to fulfil the will of his
Creator.









End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of An Essay on the Principle of Population, by 
Thomas Malthus

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