FRANCE.
French Numbers a Problem to Europe in 1802, because Law of Increase
not understood—Effects of War—Lament for the unborn millions eighty
years ago—More fitting now—Good Distribution and Production
sometimes inseparable—The Stationary State—Malthus and the French
Revolution.
In the order of his writing Malthus follows the order of his travels,
and takes France[315] after Switzerland. France presents us with facts
of an almost unique kind. But before the Revolution it had no
trustworthy parish registers to show to the English inquirer; and
Malthus would not have lingered over it, if in 1802 the public mind had
not been perplexed by a riddle, about French population and its increase
during war, of which he had the key.[316]
The essay is not meant for a mere history, and its author is not careful
to be full in his historical details if he has a body of facts
sufficient for his purpose. He even says, about some conjectures of his
own based on French figures, that he had only adopted the figures for
the sake of illustration, and had not supposed them to be strictly true.
“It will be but of little consequence if any of the facts or
calculations which have been assumed in the course of this chapter
should turn out to be false. The reader will see that the reasonings are
of a general nature, and may be true though the facts taken to
illustrate them may be inapplicable.”[317] This is not a wary admission.
Nevertheless, the chapter on France is one of the most telling in the
essay. The substance of it may be stated very shortly.
“It has been seen,” he says, “in many of the preceding chapters, that
the proportions of births, deaths, and marriages are extremely different
in different countries, and there is the strongest reason for believing
that they are very different in the same country at different periods
and under different circumstances.”[318] The truth of this remark is
borne out not only by the contrast between the France and the
Switzerland of that time, but, as we shall find, by the contrast between
the France of 1803 and the France of to-day. It is not singular that
Malthus should (wrongly) expect the Swiss to become his pupils more
easily than the French, for in his day both the mortality and the number
of marriages were greater in France than in Switzerland.[319]
He spends most pains in illustrating the contrast between the France
before the Revolution and the France at the Peace of Amiens. In many
ways it was fortunate that he confined himself to the Republican period.
It was the time when the moral position of France was highest, and she
was warring not for conquest but for defence. Switzerland had
exemplified the fact that Emigration does not permanently check
population, but, on the whole, encourages it. France, at the time
chosen, exemplified the fact that even the most destructive Wars have a
similar effect on the growth of numbers. What Malthus had proved more or
less deductively in regard to ancient nations he was able to show more
inductively by statistics in regard to modern. Great surprise was
expressed in the early days of this century that, in spite of her
enormous losses, France had not diminished in population. Malthus says
she had rather increased than diminished. According to the estimate of
the Constituent Assembly, which was confirmed by the calculations of
Necker, the population in 1792, before the war, was 26,000,000. In 1801
it seems, from the returns of the Prefects, to have been about
28,000,000.[320] In ten years the increase had been 2,000,000, or
200,000 a year. Yet at a medium calculation France, in addition to the
ordinary deaths, had lost by the war about 1,000,000 of men up to that
time,[321] or 100,000 a year. How, on the principles of Malthus, were
the two facts to be reconciled?
To reconcile them he shows, first, how, according to the figures given
by Frenchmen themselves, the numbers of the unmarried survivors at home
were more than enough to have kept up in case of necessity the old
number of marriages and the old rate of increase; second, how from
general principles there was a presumption in favour of a rapid increase
at such a time; and third, how the social and industrial conditions of
the French people since the Revolution were favourable to an increase of
population. First, then, he shows that the entire body of unmarried
persons was large enough in spite of the war to fill the vacancies and
keep up the old rate of increase. The body of the unmarried is formed by
the “accumulation” year by year of the numbers of persons, rising to
marriageable age, who are not married (or say briefly of the
marriageable unmarried, including widows and widowers). This
accumulation will only stop when the yearly accessions thereto are no
more than equal to the yearly mortality therein. The size of this body
will therefore vary with the character of the particular nation
considered. In the Canton de Vaud it was equal to the whole number of
the married; but in France both the mortality and the marriage rate were
higher than in Switzerland, and the unmarried were therefore a smaller
fraction of the total numbers. Assuming from the French authorities[322]
a certain birth and death-rate, and assuming from the same authorities
that the unmarried men for the period before the Revolution were one and
a half millions out of five millions that were marriageable, it would
appear that every year there were 600,000 persons arriving at the
marriageable age, of whom (since about 220,000 is the annual number of
marriages) 440,000 marry. The surplus of unmarried is therefore 160,000
persons, or about 80,000 men. It follows that for war purposes (if mere
numbers be considered) the reserve fund of men would be nearly one and a
half millions, and every new annual surplus of 80,000 youths above
eighteen might be taken for military service without any diminution in
the number of marriages.[323] As a matter of fact, it is putting the
case somewhat strongly to suppose as many as 600,000 to be taken for
service in the first instance, and 150,000 additional troops to keep up
the supply every year. But this would still leave in the first instance
nearly 900,000 for the reserve fund, which with the annual 80,000 could
bear a drain on it of 150,000 for ten years, and leave a balance of
200,000 altogether, or 20,000 a year. In other words, there would be
room for an increase in the number of marriages of nearly 20,000. It
would not be miraculous then if the French population should continue to
increase in the face of great losses in war, for the increase before the
war had been very much less than the greatest possible.
In the second place, the circumstances of the civilian population made
an increase very likely. Many out of the reserve fund of unmarried men
will in the course of ten years be past the military age, but not past
the age of marriage. The 150,000 recruits would probably be taken from
the 300,000 who every year rose to marriageable age, and the marriages
would be kept up from the older unmarried men, in the scarcity of
younger husbands. It may be remembered, too, that in the early years of
the war so many youths married prematurely to avoid service,[324] that
the Directory were obliged (in 1798) to extend the conscription to the
married men. But even when the husbands were removed to the war the
marriages were not necessarily childless, and would thus, at the least,
be a means of adding to the people’s numbers that did not exist before
the Revolution. The facility of divorce, too, though bad both in morals
and in politics, would at least, in the existing scarcity of men, act
somewhat like polygamy, and make the number of children greater in
proportion to the number of husbands. It is said, too, that there were
more natural children born in France after the Revolution than before
it; and, since the peasants were better off after it than before it,
there was a better chance that more of the children than formerly should
survive.
In the third place, there is no doubt, says Malthus, that the division
of the domain lands and the creation (or at least the multiplication) of
peasant properties have had a great influence both on wealth and on
population. They add to population more than to wealth, for they
increase the gross produce of food at the expense of the nett surplus.
“If all the land of England were divided into farms of £20 a year, we
should probably be more populous than we are at present, but as a nation
we should be extremely poor. We should be almost without disposable
revenue, and should be under a total inability of maintaining the same
number of manufactures or collecting the same taxes as at present.”[325]
But the division of lands was at least in favour of the gross produce,
and even the passing traveller was inclined to think, from the
appearance of the fields and the style of the field labour, that,
however severely the manufacturing industry of France might have
suffered during the war, her agriculture had rather gained than
lost.[326] The absence of so many strong men with the armies would not
only raise wages at home and make the labourers better off, but by _pro
tanto_ lessening the demand for food and taking from those at home the
burden of supporting so many men, would not raise the price of food with
the wages, but would allow real wages to rise. This would co-operate
with political causes in making the people desert the towns for the
country, and thereby it would reduce the death-rate, which is always
higher in towns than in the country. It is attested by Arthur Young (no
friend to the _Essay on Population_) that the high mortality of France
before the Revolution (according to Necker 1 in 30) was caused by an
over-population which the changes at the Revolution tended to remove.
The probability is, therefore, that the births increased and the deaths
decreased during the ten years after the Revolution; and there could be
no difficulty in understanding the increase of population in spite of
the war. In the later editions of the essay[327] Malthus confesses that
his French figures need revision; the returns of the Prefects for 1801–2
and other Government papers had given a smaller proportion of births
than he had thought probable, for the period before the Revolution. But
(he remarks) the Prefects’ returns do not embrace the earlier years of
the Revolution, precisely the time when the encouragement to marriage
would be greatest and the proportion of births highest. In any case they
show that the population of France is not less but greater since the
Revolution. If in the latter part of this period the increase was
affected by the decrease of deaths rather than by increase of births,
they not only leave his position untouched, but give him a result that
would highly please him. Certainly in England and in Switzerland, and
probably in every European country, the rate of mortality has decreased
in the last two hundred years, through the greater healthiness of the
conditions of life; and it is not at all surprising that a population
should be kept up or even made to increase with a smaller proportion of
births, deaths, and marriages than before.[328]
The French labouring classes at the beginning of the Revolution were
seventy-six per cent. worse fed, clothed, and supported than their
fellows in England.[329] Their wages were 10_d._ a day (as compared with
1_s._ 5_d._), while the price of corn was about the same; but their
condition and their remuneration had been decidedly improved by the
Revolution and the division of the national domains. Wages in money
(since Young wrote) had risen to 1_s._ 3_d._ a day; and, according to
some authorities, the real wages had become even higher than in
England.[330] The new distribution of wealth had been followed by an
immense increase in the production of it, shared by the producers
themselves, and making France immensely stronger as a nation either for
offence or defence.[331] Such an improvement in the condition of the
people would naturally be followed by diminution in the deaths; and a
diminution in the deaths must lead either to an increase of population
or to a decrease in the marriages and births. The latter (which is
presumably an increase of moral restraint) has followed. In the ten
years after the Peace of Amiens the population seems to have increased
only at a very slow rate. “There is perhaps no proposition more
incontrovertible than this, that in two countries, in which the rate of
increase, the natural healthiness of climate, and the state of towns and
manufactures are supposed to be nearly the same, the one in which the
pressure of poverty is the greatest will have the greatest proportion of
births, deaths, and marriages,” and _vice versâ_.[332]
Malthus’ survey of population in France applies only to his own
lifetime, and indeed only to the earlier part of that. To do him full
justice we must place his picture of the real losses of war alongside of
his description of the compensations.
The constant tendency of population to increase up to the limits of the
food may be interpreted (in the case of war) as the tendency of the
births in a country to supply the vacancies made by death. The breaches
are not permanent; they are among the reparable as distinguished from
the irreparable mischiefs of war. But this does not, from a moral or
political aspect, afford the slightest excuse for the misery caused
thereby to the existing inhabitants.
“Can you by filling cradles empty graves?”
There is an exchange of mature beings in the “full vigour of their
enjoyments”[333] for an equal number of helpless infants. Not only is
this a waste of the men who died, but it is a deterioration, for the
time being, of the quality of the whole people; they will consist of
more than the normal proportion of women and children; and the married
will be men and women who in ordinary times would have remained single.
When the drain of men for military service begins to exhaust the reserve
of unmarried persons, and the annual demands are in excess of the number
annually rising to marriageable age, then of course war will actually
diminish population.[334] Till that point is reached, war may alter the
units and spoil the quality of the population, but will not lessen its
total volume. Sir Francis Ivernois, from whom Malthus took some of his
figures, went too far in the other direction when he told us we must not
look so much at the deaths in battle or in hospital, when we are
counting up the destructive effects of war or revolution, as at the
remoter results; “the number of men war has killed is of much less
importance than the number of children whom it has prevented and will
still prevent from coming into the world.” He supposes one million of
men to have been lost in the Revolution itself, and one and a half
millions in its wars; and he says that, if only two millions of these
had been married, they would have needed to have had six children each
in order that a number of children equal to the number of their parents
(_i. e._ four millions) should be alive thirty-nine years afterwards. We
ought, he thinks, to mourn not only for the two and a half millions of
men killed, but for the twelve millions whom their death prevented from
being born. To which Malthus wisely answers that the slain, being
full-grown men, reared at no little cost to themselves and their
country, may be fitly mourned, but not the unborn twelve millions, whose
appearance in the world would only have sent or kept a corresponding
number out of it,—and “if in the best-governed country in Europe we were
to mourn the posterity which is prevented from coming into being, we
should always wear the habit of grief.”[335]
If Sir Francis Ivernois could have foreseen the history of French
population for seventy years after the time when he wrote, he would have
had more reason to utter his curious lament.
“The effect of the Revolution,” wrote Malthus in 1817, “has been to make
every person depend more upon himself and less upon others. The
labouring classes have therefore become more industrious, more saving,
and more prudent in marriage than formerly; and it is quite certain that
without these effects the Revolution would have done nothing for
them.”[336] The country districts which took the least active part in
the Revolution have been the most resolute in conserving the results of
it. Over-population in France is known only in the towns. At the
beginning of the eighteenth century—say one hundred and fifty years ago
(1732)—under Louis XV. the population of France was estimated at twenty
millions of people.[337] There is good reason to believe that the habits
of the people were entirely different from what they are now; they were
even said to be famous for their large families.[338] In 1776 their
numbers were about twenty-four millions,[339] at the Revolution of 1789
about twenty-six millions,[340] in 1831 thirty-two and a half, and in
1866 thirty-eight. At the present time, from loss of territory and from
decrease of numbers in certain parts of the country, they are little
more than thirty-seven and a half millions—not much more than the
population of Great Britain, a country neither so large nor so fertile.
Even in 1815 Malthus spoke of France as having a more stationary and
less crowded population than Britain, though it was richer in corn.[341]
The population of 1881 showed an increase of 766,260 over that of 1876,
and was in all 37,672,048.[342] It increases not by augmentation in the
number of births, for that has been actually lessening, but by
diminution in the deaths. The population of Britain has trebled itself
within the present century; that of France has not even doubled itself
in a century and a half, with every allowance for a varying frontier.
The fears which Malthus expressed,[343] that the law of inheritance and
compulsory division of property would lead to an excessive and
impoverished country population, have not been realized. The industrial
progress of the country has been very great. Fifty years ago the
production of wheat was only the half of what it is to-day, of meat less
than the half. In almost every crop and every kind of food France is
richer now than then in the proportion of more than 2 to 1. In all the
conveniences of life (if food be the necessaries) the increased supply
is as 4 to 1, while foreign trade has become as 6 to 1. Since property
is more widely distributed in France than elsewhere, an increase of
production is much more certain to mean a benefit to the whole people.
But there are certain classes of goods, chiefly necessaries, of which
(even in a land like England, where the great wealth is in a few hands)
it is impossible profitably to extend the production without _pari
passu_ extending the distribution. When articles of food are imported in
vast quantities, they cannot, from the nature of things, go entirely to
the rich; the rich can easily eat and drink beyond the normal value, but
not much (without Gargantua’s mouth) beyond the normal quantity; and, at
least in the case of our own country, very little is exported again.
Generally speaking, it is a true saying that, the more the food, the
more are fed. But what is true of necessaries in England is true even of
other goods in France.[344] The “average wealth of each person” is not
there, as often elsewhere, a mere arithmetical entity, but a very near
approach to the ordinary state of the great majority of the people; and
this average wealth is thought by good authorities[345] to have more
than doubled since the beginning of the century. The population, on the
other hand, has only increased by one-half; and the average duration of
life has lengthened from twenty-eight to thirty-seven years. In a paper
of Chateauneuf’s (1826) quoted by MacCulloch,[346] it was said that the
French people were improving their condition by diminishing their
marriages. The statistician Levasseur, on the contrary, with the facts
of another half-century before him, tells us that married people in
France are the _majority_ of the population,[347] the average age of
marriage being twenty-six for the women, and rather more than thirty for
the men. The birth-rate, however, is the lowest in Europe,[348] being 1
in 37, as opposed to 1 in 27 for England. It is by refusing to fill the
cradles that they leave the graves empty. Yet France is less healthy
than England. Its death-rate in 1882 was 22.2 per thousand, while in
England it was 19.6.[349]
There are other features which make the case unique. There are few
foreigners in France; the numbers of the French people are neither
swelled by immigration nor reduced by emigration. Since the expulsion of
the Huguenots and the colonization of Canada, few nations have been so
rooted in their own country; even Algerian and Tunisian conquests are
due to no popular passion for colonizing. The peasant properties have
made the people averse to movement.
At present most Frenchmen remain during life in the same Department in
which they were born;[350] and recent observers tell us[351] that a
military career is becoming distasteful to all classes. Taking the
absence of immigration as balanced by the absence of emigration, we are
brought to the conclusion that the population of France is stationary by
its own deliberate act.
How far this is in accordance with the views of Malthus it is impossible
to say in one word. It is at least the result of the prudence which he
was always preaching. But his prudence lay in the deferring of marriage;
and this is not the form which prevails in France. Moreover, he thought
with Adam Smith that the progressive state and not the stationary was
the normal one for humanity; if the whole world became contented with
what it had got, there would, in his opinion, be no progress, and the
resources and capacities of human beings and of the world would not be
developed. In fact, he retained the aspirations of the Revolution, which
the country-folk in France seem in danger of losing; he wished men to
have hopes for the future as well as a comfortable life in the present;
he saw no virtue in mere smallness any more than in mere bigness of
numbers; he desired as great as possible a population of stalwart,
well-instructed, wise, and enterprising men; he thought that, without
competition, ambition, and emulation, and without the element of
difficulty and hardship, human beings would never fully exert their best
powers, though he also thought that a time might come when the lower
classes would be as the middle classes, or, in his own words, when the
lower would be diminished and the middle increased, and when, mainly
through the action of the labourers themselves, inventions would become
a real benefit, because accompanied by lighter labour and shorter hours
for the labourers.[352] As for that love of humanity, that was so much
present in the words and thoughts if not in the deeds of the men of the
Revolution, he had a full share of it. He desired a longer life for the
living, and fewer births for the sake of fewer deaths. His work was like
that of the lighthouse, to give light and to save life.