New colonies--Reasons for their rapid increase--North American
Colonies--Extraordinary instance of increase in the back
settlements--Rapidity with which even old states recover the ravages of
war, pestilence, famine, or the convulsions of nature.
It has been universally remarked that all new colonies settled in
healthy countries, where there was plenty of room and food, have
constantly increased with astonishing rapidity in their population.
Some of the colonies from ancient Greece, in no very long period, more
than equalled their parent states in numbers and strength. And not to
dwell on remote instances, the European settlements in the new world
bear ample testimony to the truth of a remark, which, indeed, has
never, that I know of, been doubted. A plenty of rich land, to be had
for little or nothing, is so powerful a cause of population as to
overcome all other obstacles. No settlements could well have been worse
managed than those of Spain in Mexico, Peru, and Quito. The tyranny,
superstition, and vices of the mother-country were introduced in ample
quantities among her children. Exorbitant taxes were exacted by the
Crown. The most arbitrary restrictions were imposed on their trade. And
the governors were not behind hand in rapacity and extortion for
themselves as well as their master. Yet, under all these difficulties,
the colonies made a quick progress in population. The city of Lima,
founded since the conquest, is represented by Ulloa as containing fifty
thousand inhabitants near fifty years ago. Quito, which had been but a
hamlet of indians, is represented by the same author as in his time
equally populous. Mexico is said to contain a hundred thousand
inhabitants, which, notwithstanding the exaggerations of the Spanish
writers, is supposed to be five times greater than what it contained in
the time of Montezuma.
In the Portuguese colony of Brazil, governed with almost equal tyranny,
there were supposed to be, thirty years since, six hundred thousand
inhabitants of European extraction.
The Dutch and French colonies, though under the government of exclusive
companies of merchants, which, as Dr Adam Smith says very justly, is
the worst of all possible governments, still persisted in thriving
under every disadvantage.
But the English North American colonies, now the powerful people of the
United States of America, made by far the most rapid progress. To the
plenty of good land which they possessed in common with the Spanish and
Portuguese settlements, they added a greater degree of liberty and
equality. Though not without some restrictions on their foreign
commerce, they were allowed a perfect liberty of managing their own
internal affairs. The political institutions that prevailed were
favourable to the alienation and division of property. Lands that were
not cultivated by the proprietor within a limited time were declared
grantable to any other person. In Pennsylvania there was no right of
primogeniture, and in the provinces of New England the eldest had only
a double share. There were no tithes in any of the States, and scarcely
any taxes. And on account of the extreme cheapness of good land a
capital could not be more advantageously employed than in agriculture,
which at the same time that it supplies the greatest quantity of
healthy work affords much the most valuable produce to the society.
The consequence of these favourable circumstances united was a rapidity
of increase probably without parallel in history. Throughout all the
northern colonies, the population was found to double itself in
twenty-five years. The original number of persons who had settled in
the four provinces of new England in 1643 was 21,200.(I take these
figures from Dr Price's two volumes of Observations; not having Dr
Styles' pamphlet, from which he quotes, by me.) Afterwards, it is
supposed that more left them than went to them. In the year 1760, they
were increased to half a million. They had therefore all along doubled
their own number in twenty-five years. In New Jersey the period of
doubling appeared to be twenty-two years; and in Rhode island still
less. In the back settlements, where the inhabitants applied themselves
solely to agriculture, and luxury was not known, they were found to
double their own number in fifteen years, a most extraordinary instance
of increase. Along the sea coast, which would naturally be first
inhabited, the period of doubling was about thirty-five years; and in
some of the maritime towns, the population was absolutely at a stand.
(In instances of this kind the powers of the earth appear to be fully
equal to answer it the demands for food that can be made upon it by
man. But we should be led into an error if we were thence to suppose
that population and food ever really increase in the same ratio. The
one is still a geometrical and the other an arithmetical ratio, that
is, one increases by multiplication, and the other by addition. Where
there are few people, and a great quantity of fertile land, the power
of the earth to afford a yearly increase of food may be compared to a
great reservoir of water, supplied by a moderate stream. The faster
population increases, the more help will be got to draw off the water,
and consequently an increasing quantity will be taken every year. But
the sooner, undoubtedly, will the reservoir be exhausted, and the
streams only remain. When acre has been added to acre, till all the
fertile land is occupied, the yearly increase of food will depend upon
the amelioration of the land already in possession; and even this
moderate stream will be gradually diminishing. But population, could it
be supplied with food, would go on with unexhausted vigour, and the
increase of one period would furnish the power of a greater increase
the next, and this without any limit.)
These facts seem to shew that population increases exactly in the
proportion that the two great checks to it, misery and vice, are
removed, and that there is not a truer criterion of the happiness and
innocence of a people than the rapidity of their increase. The
unwholesomeness of towns, to which some persons are necessarily driven
from the nature of their trades, must be considered as a species of
misery, and every the slightest check to marriage, from a prospect of
the difficulty of maintaining a family, may be fairly classed under the
same head. In short it is difficult to conceive any check to population
which does not come under the description of some species of misery or
vice.
The population of the thirteen American States before the war was
reckoned at about three millions. Nobody imagines that Great Britain is
less populous at present for the emigration of the small parent stock
that produced these numbers. On the contrary, a certain degree of
emigration is known to be favourable to the population of the mother
country. It has been particularly remarked that the two Spanish
provinces from which the greatest number of people emigrated to
America, became in consequence more populous. Whatever was the original
number of British emigrants that increased so fast in the North
American Colonies, let us ask, why does not an equal number produce an
equal increase in the same time in Great Britain? The great and obvious
cause to be assigned is the want of room and food, or, in other words,
misery, and that this is a much more powerful cause even than vice
appears sufficiently evident from the rapidity with which even old
states recover the desolations of war, pestilence, or the accidents of
nature. They are then for a short time placed a little in the situation
of new states, and the effect is always answerable to what might be
expected. If the industry of the inhabitants be not destroyed by fear
or tyranny, subsistence will soon increase beyond the wants of the
reduced numbers, and the invariable consequence will be that population
which before, perhaps, was nearly stationary, will begin immediately to
increase.
The fertile province of Flanders, which has been so often the seat of
the most destructive wars, after a respite of a few years, has appeared
always as fruitful and as populous as ever. Even the Palatinate lifted
up its head again after the execrable ravages of Louis the Fourteenth.
The effects of the dreadful plague in London in 1666 were not
perceptible fifteen or twenty years afterwards. The traces of the most
destructive famines in China and Indostan are by all accounts very soon
obliterated. It may even be doubted whether Turkey and Egypt are upon
an average much less populous for the plagues that periodically lay
them waste. If the number of people which they contain be less now than
formerly, it is, probably, rather to be attributed to the tyranny and
oppression of the government under which they groan, and the consequent
discouragements to agriculture, than to the loss which they sustain by
the plague. The most tremendous convulsions of nature, such as volcanic
eruptions and earthquakes, if they do not happen so frequently as to
drive away the inhabitants, or to destroy their spirit of industry,
have but a trifling effect on the average population of any state.
Naples, and the country under Vesuvius, are still very populous,
notwithstanding the repeated eruptions of that mountain. And Lisbon and
Lima are now, probably, nearly in the same state with regard to
population as they were before the last earthquakes.