THE REGULATION OF NUMBERS 299 



of elimination. Disease has been known to remove one-third 

 of the population of a country in two or three years. There does 

 not, however, appear to be a single instance in which migration 

 can be traced to the recovery from such a catastrophe. What 

 appears usually to happen is that there is a certain relaxation 

 of the pressure which before either hindered marriage or caused 

 abortion or infanticide to be practised ; population increases 

 until the pressure again makes itself felt. And it may be observed 

 that it is not following upon exceptional conditions such as these 

 that migration is supposed by the authors quoted to take place. 

 It is supposed to take place because not infrequently there is 

 a condition of under-population for which there is in fact no 

 evidence whatever. This view further clearly implies an over- 

 estimate of the relief afforded by migration. The calculations 

 given on a previous page apply here. 



The view criticized above is sometimes so expressed as not to 

 lay stress upon under-population as the condition which ultimately 

 gives rise to migration. It is merely asserted that over-popula- 

 tion is in some manner the cause of migration, and we may now 

 examine this view. Let us recall what we found to be the condition 

 in those countries in which over-population had undoubtedly 

 occurred. We found the distinguishing feature of the social con- 

 ditions of those countries to be the absence of hope, of a spirit 

 of enterprise, and of a determination to maintain a standard of 

 living. It most emphatically is not where such conditions are 

 prevalent that migration takes place. All that we know of migra- 

 tion points to precisely the opposite. It is not from countries in 

 the condition of India and China at the present day or of Ireland 

 in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that waves of migra- 

 tion arise. Migrating races exhibit the opposite characters. With 

 them we associate enterprise, hopefulness, courage, and so on. 

 The conclusion cannot on general grounds be doubtful. Migration 

 does not arise where a condition of over-population has come 

 about. Further, if we examine the evidence of particular migration 

 in no case can it be shown that migration has begun as a direct 

 result of those conditions.^ It is true that compared with the 



^ Except perhaps in the case of the so-called Irish migration to America after 

 the famine in the middle of the last century. Without doubt, however, there was 

 in this migration a large political element — the nature of which is referred to below. 

 Further there were many peculiar features in the position, and the migration was 

 scarcely a migration in the broad historical sense. 



