The idea of Mr Malthus, that population has a tendency to increase
faster than the means of subsistence, unless some powerful and obvious
checks be interposed to keep down the race to the level of subsistence,
has been recently met by Mr Doubleday with a denial and an effort
at refutation. From an article by Mr Hickson in the last number of
the 'Westminster Review,' we learn that Mr Doubleday endeavours to
show grounds for believing that, while there are powerful tendencies
to increase beyond the limits of subsistence, there are likewise
tendencies to a decrease, which must result in preserving what may be
called a balance between the quantity of food and the number of people.
Mankind, from Adam downwards to our own day, have gone forward and
backward in numbers by a series of fits and starts--they have by no
means been going on as a constantly-increasing quantity. Look at the
countries in the East mentioned in the Bible--Egypt, Judæa, Asia Minor,
Persia, Assyria. Once densely peopled, they are now either desolate, or
inhabited by a poor decaying remnant of the proud races which formerly
inhabited them. Egypt would soon expire as a nation if not constantly
recruited by fresh arrivals from abroad. Neither China nor India is so
populous as it was two thousand years ago. The cultivated aboriginal
races of America, who left monuments of their greatness, long since
disappeared, and were succeeded by tribes of Indians, who are now
rapidly disappearing. The history of the world presents many other
instances of an entire disappearance of populations.
No doubt war, pestilence, famine, vice, and misery, have all played an
important part in sweeping away nations, or in reducing the numbers
of their people; but Mr Doubleday holds it to be demonstrable that
redundancy of population is prevented in a less continuous degree by
these causes, than by one which Malthus altogether overlooks--one, in
fact, which militates against his theory. The mention of this check,
which is only of recent discovery, will come upon most persons as a
surprise: it is _comfort_--easy circumstances, allied with cultivated
feeling; and, to all appearance, the easier the circumstances, the less
the increase. Mr Doubleday thinks it would not perhaps be going too
far to say, that by carrying these influences a certain length, the
race might become extinct. As proof, he refers to the gradual dying
out of families among the aristocracy and baronetage--two orders of
persons who, above all others, might be expected to be prolific in
descendants:--
'Thus it has been,' proceeds this writer, 'that the peerage of
England, instead of being old, is recent; and the baronetage,
though comparatively of modern origin, equally so. In short,
few, if any, of the Norman nobility, and almost as few of the
original baronets' families of King James I., exist at this
moment; and but for perpetual creations, both orders must have
been all but extinct. * * * Of James I.'s creation in A.D.
1611, only _thirteen families_ now remain; a decay certainly
extraordinary, and not to be accounted for upon the ordinary
ideas of mortality and power of increase amongst mankind.'
Commenting on these facts, the reviewer observes:--'Several
instances from humbler, but still wealthy, or at least
comfortable classes of society, are given by Mr Doubleday,
tending to the same conclusion, that an ample provision of the
means of subsistence does not necessarily act as a stimulus
to population, but often seems to have a directly contrary
tendency; as if ease and abundance were the real check of
population, and a certain amount of poverty and privation
were essential to any considerable increase. Thus he mentions
the case of the free burgesses of the wealthy corporation of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a body, in 1710, of about 1800, possessing
estates and endowments, and exclusive privileges, amply
sufficient to protect every individual among them from want;
and shows that, although all the sons of every citizen were
free by birth, their numbers would have diminished had they
not been recruited from without; and that, even with the aid
of contested elections, when freemen by purchase were admitted
for the sake of votes, the entire body of burgesses remained
nearly stationary for upwards of a century. This, too, while
the poorer corporation of Berwick-upon-Tweed doubled the number
of its free citizens during the same period.
'The examples of the corporation of Durham and Richmond in
Yorkshire are adduced to the same effect; but we need not go
so far north for corroborative evidence of the same class of
facts. In the corporation of London, all the children of a
citizen, whether male or female, enjoy the right of freedom by
inheritance; and as many of the exclusive privileges of this
body have not yet been done away, women still exercise in the
city various avocations in their own name (such, for instance,
as the trade of a town carman), from which the rest of the
inhabitants of the metropolis, non-freemen, are excluded.
Until recently, the freedom of the corporation of London
was essential to a share in the administration of revenues
amounting to upwards of a million per annum, and is still
indispensable to a large portion of them. We may reasonably
conclude that it was an object of some importance to the
ancient citizens of London to keep the patronage connected
with such large funds in their own hands, or to leave it in
the hands of their own posterity. This object, however, has
been so entirely defeated, that if we now inquire into the
origin of the present holders of the good things in the gift
of the London corporation and the trading companies, we find
they are nearly all north countrymen, who have elbowed their
way into the city from Scotland or the provinces, and that the
descendants of such men as Sir William Walworth and Sir Thomas
Gresham are nowhere to be found.
'During the forty years from 1794 to 1833, the admissions by
patrimony to the freedom of the corporation of London were only
7794 out of a total of 40,221 admitted--a third of the number
having been strangers who purchased their freedom, and one-half
sons of strangers obtaining their freedom by apprenticeship.'
Mr Doubleday's explanation of these phenomena is to the effect, that it
is not misery, but comfort, which deadens the principle of increase.
It is notorious that the poorest parents have, as a general rule, the
greatest number of children. Only feed people on potatoes and salt,
oatmeal-porridge, or any other plain fare, and let them at the same
time maintain a struggle to get even that, and sure enough their
firesides, or the places where the fire should be, will be garnished
by as plenteous a crop of youngsters as you could wish to behold! How
these children are fed it is often so difficult to comprehend, that
one is almost driven to the conclusion that they somehow live and have
strength to romp about on the mere element--fresh air. It is very clear
that nature abhors all sorts of codling and pampering:--
'It is a fact, admitted by all gardeners as well as botanists,'
says Mr Doubleday, 'that if a tree, plant, or flower be placed
in a mould either naturally or artificially made too rich for
it, a plethoric state is produced, and fruitfulness ceases. In
trees, the effect of strong manures and over-rich soils is,
that they run to superfluous wood, blossom irregularly, and
chiefly at the extremities of the outer branches, and almost,
or entirely, cease to bear fruit. With flowering shrubs and
flowers the effect is, first, that the flower becomes double,
and loses its power of producing seed; next, it ceases almost
even to flower. If the application of the stimulus of manure
is carried still further, flowers and plants become diseased
in the extreme, and speedily die; thus, by this wise provision
of Providence, the transmission of disease (the certain
consequence of the highly-plethoric state, whether in plants,
animals, or in mankind) is guarded against, and the species
shielded from danger on the side of plenty. In order to remedy
this state when accidentally produced, gardeners and florists
are accustomed, by various devices, to produce the opposite,
or deplethoric state; this they peculiarly denominate "giving
a check." In other words, they put the species in danger in
order to produce a corresponding determined effort of nature to
insure its perpetuation--and the end is invariably attained.
Thus, in order to make fruit-trees bear plentifully, gardeners
delay, or impede, the rising of the sap, by cutting rings in
the bark round the tree. This, to the tree, is the production
of a state of depletion, and the abundance of fruit is the
effort of nature to counteract the danger. The fig, when grown
in this climate, is particularly liable to drop its fruit
when half-matured. This, gardeners now find, can be prevented
by pruning the tree so severely as to give it a check; or,
if grown in a pot, by cutting a few inches from its roots
all round, so as to produce the same effect. The result is,
that the tree retains, and carefully matures, its fruit. In
like manner, when a gardener wishes to save seed from a gourd
or cucumber, he does not give the plant an _extra_ quantity
of manure or warmth. He does just the contrary: he subjects
it to some _hardship_, and takes the fruit that is _least_
fine-looking, foreknowing it will be filled with seed whilst
the finest fruit are nearly destitute. Upon the same principle,
it is a known fact, that after severe and long winters, the
harvests are correspondingly rapid and abundant. Vines bear
most luxuriantly after being severely tried by frost; and grass
springs in the same extraordinary manner. After the long and
trying winter of 1836-37, when the snow lay upon the ground in
the northern counties until June, the spring of grass was so
wonderful as to cause several minute experiments by various
persons. The result was, that in a single night of twelve hours
the blade of grass was ascertained frequently to have advanced
full three-quarters of an inch; and wheat and other grain
progressed in a similar manner.'
It is shown by facts, that in the animal economy a low physical state,
of course along with air and exercise, is equally favourable. In
proportion, therefore, as conditions adverse to this simple principle
are encouraged, so will the ratio of increase be limited. Indulgent
idleness, want of out-door exercise, codling with cordials, dosing
with medicines, tight-lacing, late hours, mental excitement, and fifty
other things, induce the physical weakness and irritability which
renders the production of offspring an impossibility. Causes of this
kind, operating along with those artificial restraints, the validity
of which Malthus is so far right in recognising, are mainly concerned
in keeping population within bounds. It would then appear, that so
long as there is an abject, struggling poor, ignorant and ill-fed,
there will be a vigorous growth, a dangerous population--dangerous,
because redundant as respects their capacity and will to work. On the
other hand, by an universal spread of education, by the cultivation of
rational tastes and habits, and by the simple mode of living which such
tastes would engender, there will ensue something like a medium between
a relatively-redundant and a comparative extinction of population.