Cobbctt and Mill. 487 



Confining his attention to the evil of over-population, Mill 

 points out that it can be, and had been regulated, by either 

 law or custom, and cites instances abroad where both agencies 

 were in operation. In England, however, he shows that 

 neither law nor custom has to any extent been brought to lu ar 

 on the difficulty. The practice in certain localities where a 

 small clique of landlords banded together, and, by limiting the 

 supply of cottage accommodation, restrained population in 

 their particular parishes, was the only instance of such a 

 policy ; and Parliament, recognising the injustice of a pro- 

 cedure so detrimental to the neighbouring districts, was even 

 then about to abolish it by making the poor rate chargeable 

 on the whole union instead of a single parish. 



Mill's remedy was to establish a national scheme of coloniza- 

 tion, first on the waste lands of England, and ultimately on 

 those of foreign countries. Side by side with such a proposal 

 he placed his other suggestion. The people, he maintained, 

 must be educated to such a degree of common sense that they 

 could see for themselves the boundary line between provident 

 and improvident marriages, and judge how soon after it has 

 been crossed, their migration to less crowded districts becomes 

 a prudent consideration. 



But Mill fully recognised that a policy such as his would 

 widen the breach and embitter the feud between capital and 

 labour, and he therefore urges on both interests the necessity 

 of a co-operative system, the germs of which, even at the 

 period when he wrote, were apparent among the tin mines 

 in Cornwall and on the decks of American ships in the China 

 seas. 



All this is the very essence of philosophical thought, and 

 though we may cavil at a remedy which presupposes the pos- 

 sibility of artificially perfecting the intelligence of a class too 

 busy with its hands to devote much time to brain work ; we 

 cannot despise a solution of the difficulty which gives a pre- 

 ference to the principles of the mind over those of brute force. 



When we turn to the ^'^ exaggeratio ad captandum vidgus^^ 

 form of argument employed by Cobbett, though it ignores just 

 those points where Mill makes his stand, we are affi^rded a 



