BY R. M. JOHNSTON, F.L.S. 187 



brandished, dirks danced a war dauce." At the beginning of 

 the eighteenth century even, the only press in England, north of 

 the Trent was at York. Social discipline was very far from 

 being of that kind which we call moral. The master whipped 

 his apprentice, the pedagogue his scholar, the husband his 

 wife. ... It was a day for the rabble when the culprit 

 was set in the pillory to be pelted with brickbats, rotten eggs, 

 and dead cats ; when women were fastened by the legs in the 

 stocks at the market place, or a pilferer flogged through the 

 town at the cart tail. ... To a debased public life private 

 life corresponded. The houses of the rural population were 

 (chimneyless) huts covered with thatch ; their inmates, if 

 able to procure fresh meat once a week, were considered to be 

 in prosperous circumstances. One-half of the families in 

 England could hardly do that. Children six years old were 

 not unfrequently set to labour. In London the houses were 

 mostly wood and plaster, the streets filthy beyond expression. 

 There were no lamps. ... As a necessary consequence 

 there were plenty of shoplifters, highwaymen, and burglars." 



No earnest and dispassionate person can contrast the con- 

 ditions of the past with those of the present without frankly 

 acknowledging the great progress among all classes, including 

 the lowest in the scale ; and further, that were it not for the 

 vast increase in productive power the 30 millions of souls 

 added to the population of the United Kingdom since the 

 beginning of the eighteenth century would not have been 

 called into existence. Misery and death would have arretted 

 population at the limit of its old lower productive power, just 

 as it has in all times prevented population from passing 

 beyond the productive power of the respective times and 

 places. Nay, no reasonable mind can for a moment doubt 

 that the extra 30 million souls — with wants supplied more 

 effectively than were the 7 millions at the beginning of the 

 eighteenth century — is in itself the best proof that can be 

 conceived of the beneficial influence exerted by the knowledge 

 which man has gained over the forces of Nature since that 

 time. Indeed, so palpable must this appear to any thoughtful 

 mind that he or she would readily assent to the proposition 

 that increase of population is possible only so long as the 

 productive power makes a corresponding advance. When it 

 becomes stationary j^opulation must become stationary ; and 

 that means intense competition for primary wants of existence, 

 resulting in misery and starvation to the weakest, and 

 indicated most infallibly by a sudden rising of the death rate 

 to, or even above, the birth rate. These inevitable con- 

 sequencts will be more fully discussed hereafter under the 

 heading " Population DiflBculties." In the meantime, instead 

 of making idle assertions, let us contrast the present with the 



