24 HISTORICAL 



men ' affirming that we had already too great a store of people in 

 England ; and that youth, by marrying too soon, do nothing 

 profit the countrie, but fill it full of beggars, to the hurt and utter 

 undoing (they sale) of the commonwealth '.^ Later we find 

 Bruckner speaking as follows : ' there are some who believe that 

 a people can never be too numerous and who speak of increase 

 as if it always contributed to happiness, and who consequently 

 continually urge the sovereign to encourage multiplication. The 

 truth of the matter is, however, often far different, depending on 

 the country and circumstances. In a free and enlightened nation, 

 which has great natural advantages, and which is protected from 

 the invasions of less fortunate neighbours, increasing numbers are 

 a good. ... In countries not so circumstanced increase is worse 

 than useless ; it is, as a matter of fact, impossible, and attempts 

 in this direction can but result in added suffering and an increased 

 number of deaths.' ^ Arthur Young said the same in more 

 emphatic terms. ' Of all the subjects of political economy I know 

 not one that has given rise to such a crowd of errors as that of 

 population. It seems for centuries to have been considered as the 

 only test of national prosperity. The politicians of those times, 

 and the majority of them in the present, have been of the opinion 

 that to enumerate the people was the only step to be taken in 

 order to ascertain the degree in which a country was flourishing. 

 In my tour through the North of England, 1769, I entered my 

 caveat against such a doctrine, and presumed to assert " that no 

 nation is rich or powerful by mere numbers of people ; it is the 

 industrious class that constitutes a nation's strength " ; that 

 assertion I repeated in my Political Arithmetic in 1774.' ^ About 

 the same time Rousseau remarked that ' il y a pire disette pour un 

 etat que celle d'hommes '.* 



6. In the eighteenth century the problem was often discussed 

 with reference to the connexion between the population and the 

 food supply. The contrast between the vast possibilities of increase 

 and the smallness of the actual growth in population also often 

 attracted attention. ' Through various causes ', says Wallace, 

 * there has never been such a number of inhabitants on the earth 

 at any one point of time as might have been raised by the prolific 



* Quoted by Stangeland, loc. cit., p. 110. " Quoted by Stangeland, loc. 



cit., p. 234. Bruckner's work was published in 1769. ^ Young, Travels in 



France, vol. i, p. 481. * Quoted by Leroy-Beaulieu, La Qiiestion de la Popu- 



lation, p. 31. 



