TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 603 
constantly supplying the best machinery, but the best Lancashire hands to. the 
mills of the Continent, the United States, and India. 
The author does not wish to advocate a return of British workpeople to an un- 
necessary increase of labour, or any unnecessary sacrifice of the beneficial influences of 
properly applied leisure; but, with the facts before them, it is for the co-partnership 
of capital and labour to determine in what proportion they can afford to appropriate» 
their time between labour and leisure. 
It is true that for every farthing which might, be saved in increased economy in 
respect of the elements of cost within our control, we are: handicapped five or ten 
farthings by the protective tarifis of other countries, but they are not within our 
control, and a saving of even a farthing a pound. often makes all the difference 
between good trade and bad trade. 
It has been urged in some quarters that the remedy for trade depression is to 
be found in the closing of our mills one or two days a week, so as to limit supply: 
and so stimulate demand. 
Tn the author's opinion such a course would be suicidal, for, while it would enhance 
the cost of production to ourselves, it would not affect the cost to our competitors of 
their productions, while they would equally participate in the advantages of the 
advance in price. So they would be encouraged to erect new mills, and to the 
extent to which we had thrown our own mills out of employment voluntarily, 
they would have to remain closed afterwards under compulsion of the secondary 
effects of our own acts. 
The present depressed condition of things is thus attributable to the reality of 
foreign competition, encouraged by twofold causes, viz., (1) the legitimate effects of 
improved appliances arising ‘out of the common human advancement, and (2) the 
illegitimate consequence of international boycotting,’ that is to say, protective 
tariffs, and of our own internal trade restrictions. 
The only hope of relief lies in the economy of our work, the quality of our 
workmanship, our own persistent loyalty to the principles of liberty in relation to 
trade, and the gradual recognition on the part of other nations of the same great 
principle, 
2. An Attempt at the more Definite Statement of the Malthusian Principle.! 
By the Rey. WituiAmM CUNNINGHAM. 
| 1. The principle of Malthus was well founded, and soon attained general accept- 
ance; but this leads to its being sometimes stated in an exaggerated form, and 
hems used as an excuse for apathy in regard to human misery. 
. There must be (somewhere or other) an absolute limit to the possible produc- 
tion. from the globe, and, as population increases steadily in many lands, the 
teaching of this absolute limit of possible production is a mere question of time. 
| 93. ‘Population tends to increase faster than the means of subsistence are! 
increased.’ This seems to mean more than that population is capable of so in- 
creasing, and to be a statement in regard to actual occurrences. If so it can only, 
be proved by showing that population—where definitely observed—has tended to 
increase faster than the means of subsistence were increased. 
| 4. There is no proof of this from English history, and no primd facie support is 
given to it when we compare the growth, of population in recent years with that 
of productive power as measured by capital, and of purchasing power as measured | 
by our exports of native products and manufactures. The tendency to rapid repro-; 
duction must \be regarded as occult in our own, land and century. Besides, it is 
wise to classify our facts before we assign causes ; especially is this the case when 
the whole question is as to the precise effect of a force, the reality of which all 
admit. The growth of population may be described in three propositions. 
5. I. Population has generally increased up to the relative linit set by the power 
of procuring subsistence at any given time and place. 
_ «6, But skill and enterprise move the relative limit nearer to Lae absolute limit, 
and give population the opportunity of advancing. 
) Macmillaw’s Magazine, December 1883. 
