Pojnthtion and Sustenance. 69 



nomical system has prevailed has the increase of population 

 outrun the increasing capability of the soil to support it. In 

 Belgium, where the density of the population is probably 

 greater than anywhere else in the civilized world — four hun- 

 dred and thirty-three to a square mile, or more than one to 

 every arable acre in the kingdom — with a very defective so- 

 cial system, sufficient food is produced from the soil to supply 

 all its own habitants and afford a surplus for exportation — 

 this, too, in what was originally one of the most sterile coun- 

 tries in Europe. France, with a density of one hundred and 

 seventy-nine to a square mile, feeds all her own people and 

 has food to spare. The agricultural productions of France 

 have more than doubled within the last forty years, while, as 

 we have seen, at her present rate of increase, it takes two hun- 

 dred and seventy-seven years for her population to double. 

 This does not appear as though population were pressing very 

 closely upon subsistence in France. Great Britain seems to 

 be almost the only country in which there is any alarm con- 

 cerning the relations of population to subsistence, yet Great 

 Britain is capable of producing far more than food enough to 

 supply her present population but for the system of econom.y 

 encouraged by her, which subordinates agriculture to trade. 

 Mr. Mill himself shows, with great conclusiveness, how greatly 

 superior is the French system of peasant proprietors, by which 

 the land is divided up into small farms. It was claimed by 

 some British economists, that this measure, which, I believe, 

 began to be ad(;pted before the revolution, and was more fully 

 carried out subsequently, would result in a vast increase of 

 the population, because as it would at first render sustenance 

 more abundant for the lower classes, it would thus remove the 

 motive to self-restraint, leaving them to multiply, as it was 

 forcibly expressed, " like rabbits in a warren." He shows 

 that after half a century of experiment the effect is of a di- 

 rectly contrary character. We have seen above that the in- 

 crease of population in France is insignificantly small in 



