1885 .] 
The Population Question. 
509 
France has been for some time a Malthusian nation • her 
than t a hl 0 f° f h *t S lncrea u sed indeed > much less rapidly 
thfn i h u 0f H 1 ? e !S nbouring nations - From this restrict 
w h , has certainl y reaped very tangible advantages ; she 
has, so to speak, capitalised the funds that would otherwise 
nf av ^r n exp ^ ded on the nurture of an additional number 
ot children. The competition, both for employment and for 
ood, has been much reduced. But along with these benefits 
come ceitain drawbacks which French statesmen are beg;in- 
mng to view with alarm. They announce that the people 
ot t ranee form a much smaller fraction of the total popula- 
tion ot Europe than was the case a hundred— or even fifty- 
years ago. They see that if the present state of things 
continues France will gradually subside into the position of 
a minor power, and in the event of war must be crushed by 
sheer superiority of numbers, just as was Denmark when 
attacked by Prussia and Austria. 
But, leaving war out of the question, we see another 
method in which a Malthusian nation may be severely injured 
by its non-Malthusian neighbours, i. e., by immigration. For 
what does a country gain by restricting the excessive increase 
ot its own population if the room thus created is to be filled 
up by the influx of aliens, generally indifferent, if not ac- 
tually hostile, to its interests ? Even at present, with our 
rapidly increasing British population, there is a constant 
stream of immigration from the Continent which goes far to 
neutralise, the benefit which we derive from emigration to 
the Colonies, and which is a most cruel wrong to the people 
of these realms. We may well ask, would not this alien 
influx greatly increase if we as a nation adopted the Mal- 
thusian system ? 
Again, we may see somewhat analogous results where 
different races co-exist in the same State. This we may 
observe at home. We have, indeed, in these islands nothing 
that can be called formal Malthusianism. But of the two 
main races of which the British people are constituted, the 
one that of Teutonic origin — from prudential motives is 
apt to marry later than the Celtic portion. Hence it is 
considered by many ethnologists that in Britain the English 
and Lowland Scottish element is decreasing, whilstthe Welsh, 
Irish, and Highland Scottish element is increasing. 
In the United States of America analogous phenomena 
are observed. The true, typical Yankee, of English stock, 
observes the dictates of prudence as regards the time of 
marriage. The American citizen of Irish descent, and in 
the South the Negro and Negroid part of the population, 
