CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



decreasing fertility in the country, while its popu- 

 lation is always increasing. To this it is replied 

 by the opposite party, that while worse and worse 

 soils are in the course of being resorted to, better 

 and better modes of culture are coming into 

 operation, so as to make perhaps a third-rate 

 soil capable of producing as much, by a certain 

 amount of labour, as a second-rate soil was a few 

 years before ; and so on with the other qualities, 

 each being raised a degree in the scale by every 

 fresh effort of human ingenuity. In point of fact, 

 the best British soils do now bear four times the 

 quantity of grain they bore a few centuries ago, 

 and millions of acres then deemed unfit for tillage 

 now produce as much by the same degree of 

 labour as the best soils did at that time. Add to 

 this the improved modes of culture, which lessen 

 the amount of labour, the application of stimulants 

 hitherto unknown, and also the more economical 

 modes of sowing and preparing food, and you 

 have a ratio of increase in the means of subsist- 

 ence equivalent to anything anticipated in the 

 progress of population. 



The Malthusians, moreover, were said by their 

 opponents to derive the strength of their case 

 from limiting their views to a certain region. 

 Their propositions, it was admitted, might be true 

 with regard to a population shut up in a certain 

 small space, without any connection with what is 

 beyond. But such a population never existed, 

 and therefore the apprehended evils never can 

 take place. From the earliest notices we have of 

 the human family, it appears to have been their 

 custom to spread abroad over the soil, when they 

 found that food could be more easily obtained 

 at a distance from the natal spot than at the 

 natal spot itself. At the present time, a large 

 part of the earth's surface remains unpopulated 

 and uncultivated, while in many places cultivation 

 is carried on in a rude and primitive manner. 

 Even where the best modes of cultivation exist, 

 the limit of productiveness is far from having 

 been reached. With such an indefinite field 

 still before us, it seems absurd to be under 

 any anxiety as to the supposed tendency of the 

 human family to a too rapid increase. The 

 superabundant population of one district has only 

 to go to some yet unpeopled or thinly populated 

 spot, or to exert ingenuity and industry to raise 

 more food from that which they do occupy, in 

 order to maintain themselves in comfort. There 

 is another means whereby it may chance that a 

 superabundant population can support itself in 

 the native locality, though the productiveness 

 of that locality falls short of the demand for 

 food. If it possess advantages for manufactures, 

 it can exert its industry in that way, and ex- 

 change the products for food raised in other 

 countries, where subsistence exceeds population, 

 and where advantages for manufactures do not 

 exist. 



The opponents of Malthus combated his notion 

 of checks on moral and religious grounds ; and 

 here, certainly, the general feelings of mankind 

 greatly favoured their views. It was held as 

 an impeachment of that system of wisdom and 

 benevolence seen throughout all nature, that one 

 of the most powerful tendencies of human beings 

 should be supposed to require being put under an 

 absolute arrestment, upon the penalty of its other- 

 wise leading to misery in the individual, and 



500 



1 embarrassment in the community. It was held that 

 the preventive check, supposing it to be capable 

 of operating without an increase of immorality, 

 was necessarily attended by an abridgment of 

 human happiness, in as far as it involved a denial 

 and repression of the domestic affections. Its 

 ; cruelty was also partial, for it bore solely on the 

 poorer classes, to whom celibacy is a greater 

 hardship than to the rich. And even supposing 

 that it could be morally carried into effect, so as 

 to keep down population at a certain level, it was, 

 after all, an uncalled-for interference with Divine 

 arrangements, which, from all analogy, as well as 

 from their practical effect, might be supposed to 

 \ be designed for good ends. For do we not see 

 ] that the charge of a family acts in all well-con- 

 stituted minds as an incentive to industry? and 

 can we doubt that equally will a growing popula- 

 tion tend, in ordinary circumstances, to increase 

 , the industry of a nation ? Contemplated thus, 

 , the tendency to increase would appear as a 

 means, in Providence, to stimulate men and 

 nations to the utmost possible exertion for the 

 improvement of the materials placed at their 

 command, so that no faculty of their being might 

 lie waste, and no power of physical nature remain 

 useless and unenjoyed. Supposing this to be one 

 of the final causes of the population principle, the 

 preventive check of the Malthusians must neces- 

 sarily appear an impious attempt to control one of 

 the Creator's most important designs. 



GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 



Much of the angry opposition excited by the 

 publication of Malthus's Essay, and the cold un- 

 feeling manner in which its arguments were inter- 

 preted by many of the earlier Malthusians, has 

 disappeared of late years, and although the accu- 

 racy of the conclusions arrived at by Malthus is by 

 no means generally admitted, there are few im- 

 partial thinkers who do not recognise the import- 

 ance of his views. Probably this is due in some 

 measure to the influence exercised by the writings 

 of the late John Stuart Mill, who, in his Principles 

 ' of Political Economy, has endorsed the leading 

 features of the Malthusian theory. 



But although the doctrines of Malthus have 

 become more dispassionately received, the facts 

 upon which they are based and are intended to 

 elucidate do not appear to have met a corre- 

 sponding amount of increased attention, especially 

 on the part of the labouring classes, who are 

 primarily interested. This result may be par- 

 tially accounted for by the facilities afforded 

 by the colonies and other English-speaking 

 countries for the speedy absorption of our con- 

 tinually increasing population. We do not ex- 

 perience the evils which instinctively lead the 

 inhabitants of other countries to place certain 

 restraints upon the natural increase of their num- 

 bers, as in Norway, in Switzerland, and in France, 

 | where the bulk of the population consists of 

 I peasant-proprietors, among whom the habits of 

 | emigration characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race 

 are comparatively weak. These people feel that 

 ! an incautious multiplication of their families 

 must infallibly sink them in poverty and degrade 

 them in civilisation. Accordingly, we find, even 

 among the poorer classes, the instincts of popula- 

 tion placed habitually under restraint, as shewn by 



