POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



Political attention to this calamity, under which nations have 

 Economy. ] o ng suffered, without knowing it, whilst he gave an 

 s -*~r~* 1 ' > a j|arm to legislators, did not reach the true principles 

 which he seemed on the road to find. On reading his 

 writings, one is struck at once with an essential error in 

 his reasoning, and with the importance of the facts to 

 which he appeals. Such confusion, in a matter to 

 which the happiness of man is attached, may produce 

 the most fatal consequences. By rigorously applying 

 principles deficient in accuracy, the most grievous er- 

 rors may be committed ; and if, on the other hand, the 

 error is discovered, there is a risk of simultaneously 

 rejecting both the observations and the precepts. 



Mr. Mai thus established as a principle that the popu- 

 lation of every country is limited by the quantity of sub- 

 sistence which that country can furnish. This propo- 

 sition is true only when applied to the whole terrestrial 

 globe, or to a country which has no possibility of trade ; 

 in all other cases, foreign trade modifies it ; and, far- 

 ther, which is more important, this proposition is but 

 abstractly true, true in a manner inapplicable to po- 

 litical economy. Population has never reached the 

 limit of subsistence, and probably it never will. Long 

 before the population can be arrested by the inability 

 of the country to produce more food, it is arrested by 

 the inability of the population to purchase that food, or 

 to labour in producing it. 



The whole population of a state, says Mr. Malthus, 

 may be doubled every twenty-five years ; it would thus 

 follow a geometrical progression : but the labour em- 

 ployed to meliorate a soil, already in culture, can add 

 to its produce nothing but quantities continually de- 

 creasing. Admitting that, during the first twenty-five 

 years, the produce of land has been doubled, during the 

 second we shall scarcely succeed in compelling it to pro- 

 duce a half more, then a third more, then a fourth. Thus 

 the progress of subsistence will not follow the geometri- 

 cal but the arithmetical progression ; and, in the course 

 of two centuries, whilst the population increases, as the 

 numbers, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, subsistence will in- 

 crease not faster than the numbers, \, 2, 3, A>, 5, 6, 7> 8. 

 This reasoning, which serves as a basis to the system 

 of Mr. Malthus, and to which he incessantly appeals 

 through the whole course of his book, is completely 

 sophistical. It opposes the possible increase of the 

 human population, considered abstractly, and without 

 regarding circumstances, to the positive increase of ani- 

 mals and vegetables in a confined place, under circum- 

 stances more and more unfavourable. They ought not 

 thus to be compared. Abstractly, the multiplication 

 of food follows a geometrical progression, no less than 

 the multiplication of men. It follows it only in a much 

 more rapid manner. In a given space and time, this 

 progression is not followed any more by the one species 

 than the other. Population is arrested first, and arrests 

 subsistence in its turn; when the obstacle is re- 

 moved, both begin again to increase, till they reach a 

 new limit equally common to both ; and the history of 

 the universe has never yet presented the example of a 

 country in which the multiplication of food could not 

 be more rapid than that of the coexistent population. 



In a state absolutely savage, men live on the pro- 

 duce of hunting and fishing. The fish and the game 

 are multiplied like man in a geometrical progression, 

 but much more rapid than the one he follows. Man, 

 it is true, hinders their reproduction, by destroying 

 them ; but, on the other hand, they arrest his j for it 

 is not certainly among nations of hunters that the popu- 

 lation is doubled every twenty-five years ; and when- 



ever this destruction is suspended, the reproduction of Political 

 game will be much more rapid than that of men. Economy. 



The progress of civilization substitutes the pastoral 

 life for a life of hunting ; and the natural produce of 

 the ground, better managed, is sufficient for a much 

 more numerous population of men and of animals. 

 The deserts, which scarcely support five hundred Chi- 

 rokee hunters, would be sufficient for ten thousand Tar- 

 tar shepherds, with all their flocks ; the multiplication 

 of the latter is always much more rapid than that of 

 men j whilst the production of a man requires twenty- 

 five years, that of an ox requires but five, of a sheep 

 but two, of a hog but one. The number of oxen may 

 be doubled in six years, that of sheep in three, that of 

 hogs may be rendered ten times as great in two years. 

 Whenever a shepherd gains possession of a country 

 formerly abandoned to hunting, the multiplication of 

 his flocks will greatly precede that of his family ; when, 

 afterwards, one of the two is arrested, the other will 

 be so too. 



But when civilization makes a new step, pastoral na- 

 tions abandon their flocks for agriculture ; and instead 

 of trusting to the natural productions of the vegetable 

 kingdom, they produce and multiply them by their 

 labours. It is calculated that thirty families may live 

 on the corn produced by a piece of ground, which 

 would have supported only a single family by its pro- 

 duce in cattle. At the time, therefore, when a nation 

 passes from the pastoral to the agricultural state, it in 

 some sense acquires a country thirty times as large as 

 the one it formerly occupied. If the whole of this 

 country is not cultivated, if even in the most civilized 

 kingdoms there remains a vast extent of fertile land 

 still employed in unprofitable pasturage, it is an evident 

 proof that other causes than want of subsistence pre- 

 vent the development of population. 



The multiplication of vegetables follows a geometri- 

 cal progression much more rapid still than the multi- 

 plication of cattle. In common tillage, corn increases 

 fivefold in the course of a year ; potatoes tenfold in 

 the same space of time. The latter vegetable, to pro- 

 duce a given quantity of food, scarcely requires the 

 tenth part of the ground which corn would occupy. 

 Yet even in the most populous countries, men are 

 very far from having planted all their corn fields 

 with potatoes ; from having sown all their pasturages 

 with corn ; from having converted into pasturage all 

 their woods, all their deserts abandoned to hunting. 

 Those things are a fund of reserve remaining to eve- 

 ry nation; and by means of them, if a new demand 

 for labour should suddenly cause the population to 

 increase as rapidly as the nature of man can permit, 

 the multiplication of food would still precede it. 



The demand for labour which the capital of a 

 country can pay, and not the quantity of food which 

 that country can produce, regulates the population. 

 In political economy, nothing is reckoned a demand 

 but what is accompanied with a sufficient compensa- 

 tion for the thing demanded. If no fault has been 

 committed on the part of government, if no dangerous 

 prejudice has been diffused among the people, very 

 few men will think of marrying, and burdening their 

 hands with the subsistence of individuals unable to pro- 

 cure it themselves, till they have first acquired an esta- 

 blishment. But whenever a new demand for labour 

 raises their wages, and thus increases their revenue, 

 they hasten to satisfy one of the first laws of nature, 

 and seek in marriage a new source of happiness. If 

 the rise of wages was but mpmentary ; if, for example, 



