112 CAUSES OF THE DECLINE 







:ers, 



inventions she required workers and capital. Worker 

 because although all these inventions added enormously to 

 the productiveness of labour, yet more was ever demanded. 

 Capital, because without it all this machinery could not b^ 

 set going. Both were found. It is impossible, indeed, to 

 say with accuracy what the population of England had 

 been or was at that moment. No census was taken till 

 1801, and all esrrmates were founded on calculations of 

 a very loose character. Davenant, writing in 1688, who 

 based his conclusions . on the number of houses, put the 

 population of England at some five and a half millions. 1 



It is interesting to note that the general impression till 

 quite late in the eighteenth century was that population 

 was decreasing, a view first definitely combated by A. Young 

 on a priori grounds, based on the industrial prosperity of the 

 country, and finally scouted by Mai thus, who in 1798 

 developed his famous theory that population, unless con- 

 trolled by positive or negative checks, which were being 

 abandoned in England, tended to outrun the means of 

 subsistence. 2 



The estimate of Kickman (1831) 3 that by the middle of 

 the eighteenth century it had reached six and a half millions, 

 an increase of a million since 1688, does not appear improb- 

 able ; but all we can say with certainty is, that by the census 

 of 1801 the population of England and Wales was found to 

 be nearly nine millions (8,873,000, exclusive of Scotland 

 and Ireland, total nearly fifteen millions), while by 1901 it 

 had nearly quadrupled itself. Meanwhile, the populatic 



1 Political and Commercial works of C. Davenant, revised 

 Sir C. Whitworth, 1761, vol. ii. 184. 



2 Richard Price, Essay on Population, 1780 ; A. Young, Politic 

 Arithmetic, i. 90; North of England, i. 177, iv. 411; Malthus, Ess 

 on Population. 



8 J. Rickman, Abstract of Answers and return to Pop. Ac 

 11 Geo. IV, Preface. 



