MACHINES FAVOUR POPULATION. 421 
resources and foresight. A work of recent date has shown, - 
that in England alone (Ireland and Scotland being thus 
left aside), the capital belonging to mere workmen, that 
has been deposited in the savings’ banks, amounts to 
nearly four hundred millions of francs (16,000,000/.). 
The verification of property in all the principal towns 
is not less instructive. 
One principle only has remained uncontested, amidst 
all the animated debates to which political economy has 
given rise: and this is, that population increases with 
general comfort, and that it diminishes rapidly in times 
of scarcity.* Let us place facts by the side of the prin- 
ciple. Whilst the mean population of England was 
increasing during the last thirty years 50 per cent., 
Nottingham and Birmingham, two of the most indus- 
trial cities, presented a still larger augmentation, to the 
amount of 25 and even 40 per cent. Finally, Man- 
chester and Glasgow, which occupy the first rank in the 
whole British empire, from the number, the size, and the 
importance of the machines that they employ, saw their 
population, in the same period of the last thirty years, 
increase from 150 to 160 per cent. This was three or 
four times more than in the agricultural counties and 
towns not possessing manufactories. 
Such numbers speak for themselves. No sophistry, 
no false philanthropy, no efforts of eloquence, can resist 
them. 
* Ireland is an exception to this rule, the cause of which is well 
known; and I shall have occasion to recur to it. 
+ This sentence would have been clearer, had the author, instead of 
“ aecroissements de 25 et de 40 pour 100 plus considérables encore,” said 
75 and even 90 per cent.; because he means 25 added to the above 50, 
and 40 added to the 50 per cent.,—since he gives them as instances of 
larger augmentations.— Translator. 
