TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. lo5 



required to replace the two parents. He mentions that eminent statist, M. Legoyt, 

 and a number of other French writers, as having from time to time for some years 

 called attention to the diminishing tendency to increase in the French population ; 

 and, while making various suggestions of more than questionable soundness to 

 check what he, unlike Malthus and Mill, describes as the greatest national mis- 

 fortune, speaks quite despondingly of the relatively retrogade position of France 

 in the world, as compared with the Anglo-Saxon race increasing at the rate of 

 a million a year. The pressure of population in France has never been such as 

 to lead to any great amount of emigration, though there was some which prospered 

 fairly in the old Bourbon times. In Algeria, the last conquest of that dynasty, and 

 now the only considerable Colonial possession held by France — for it may be doubted 

 whether Cochin China has not too recently been acquired, and whether its occupa- 

 tion is not still too largely military, fairly yet to count as a colony — in Algeria the 

 few colonists have not generally prospered much, or spread far beyond the towns ; 

 indeed the majority of them "are not French, but Maltese and other foreigners. 

 And whereas in the' days of the great Lord Chatham her colonies in North America, 

 with Canada on one side and Louisiana on the other, were more extensive than 

 ours — whereas, besides having several islands in the West Indies, she balanced us 

 in the East Indies, and in France herself she bad more than double the population 

 that we had in the British Isles, — in less than a century she had been practically 

 swept out of the East Indies, and had lost most of her islands in the "West 

 Indies. Only a few French settlers remained in America, and those all under 

 Anglo-Saxon dominion, those in Louisiana being subjects of the United States, 

 those in Canada of England. For we had conquered Canada and extended our 

 dominion to the Pacific Ocean, thougb we had by our folly lost the United States ; 

 we had taken the Cape from the Dutch, and pushed our settlements far into South 

 Africa ; we had increased largely by conquest our possessions in the West Indies ; 

 almost the whole of Hindostan had been gradually either incorporated in our 

 dominions, or practically accepted our supremacy; and last, not least, wc had 

 colonized the Australian continent and New Zealand, both of which were yearly in- 

 creasing prodigiously in wealth and population. And yet, notwithstanding the large 

 emigration from the British Isles to the United States as well as to our i >wn colonies, 

 the number of inhabitants in them had nearly tripled, from about 10,000,000 in 

 1760, to more than 29,000,000 in 1801, though in France they had only increased 

 from nearly 22,000,000 to rather more than 37,000,000 during the same interval. 

 Indeed ours have now increased to more than 32,000,000, which is_ only about 

 4,000,000 less than those of France since she has lost Alsace and Lorraine. 



To show the complete reversal, among political economists in general, of the once 

 almost universally received doctrine as to subsistence and population, I must quote, 

 abridging it slightly, another passage from the same supplement by Dr. Farr which 

 I cited before : — 



" Iu the earlier years, though not recorded, the produce hi America increased 

 undoubtedly as nearly in geometrical progression as the population counted at each 

 census ; and if the early censuses prove that popidation mcreases, the recent cen- 

 suses prove that subsistence increases in geometrical progression There is a 



lnnit to the increase of both people and produce ; but the tendency now is, as men 

 endowed with skill, weapons, tools, and marvellous machines are diffused over the 



world, to create subsistence faster than population Malthus lays it down 



that (1) ' popidation cannot increase without the means of subsistence ; ' that (2) 

 'popidation does invariably increase where there are means of subsistence ; ' and 

 that (3), as stated in Ins last edition, ' the checks which repress the superior power 

 of population, and keep its effects on a level with the means of subsistence, are all 

 resolvable into moral restraint, vice, and misery.' The theory is as mislead- 

 ing in practice as it is defective in statement, and, as expressed, erroneous in fact. 

 It assumes that the restraint of popidation is the corner-stone of policy. Had this 

 principle been accepted by the people, the population of the kingdom, instead of 

 amounting to thirty-two millions, would have remained, as it was at the beginning 

 of the century, sixteen millions. England, in the presence of the great continental 

 states, would have been now a second-rate power ; her dependencies must have been 

 lost ; her colonies have remained unpeopled ; her industry crippled for want of 

 hands ; her commerce limited for want of ships." 



