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.f 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. 



t This sentence would have been clearer, had the author, instead of 

 " accroissements de 25 et de 40 pour 100 plus considerables 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. 



