Mr Wallace--Error of supposing that the difficulty arising from
population is at a great distance--Mr Condorcet's sketch of the
progress of the human mind--Period when the oscillation, mentioned by
Mr Condorcet, ought to be applied to the human race.
To a person who draws the preceding obvious inferences, from a view of
the past and present state of mankind, it cannot but be a matter of
astonishment that all the writers on the perfectibility of man and of
society who have noticed the argument of an overcharged population,
treat it always very slightly and invariably represent the difficulties
arising from it as at a great and almost immeasurable distance. Even Mr
Wallace, who thought the argument itself of so much weight as to
destroy his whole system of equality, did not seem to be aware that any
difficulty would occur from this cause till the whole earth had been
cultivated like a garden and was incapable of any further increase of
produce. Were this really the case, and were a beautiful system of
equality in other respects practicable, I cannot think that our ardour
in the pursuit of such a scheme ought to be damped by the contemplation
of so remote a difficulty. An event at such a distance might fairly be
left to providence, but the truth is that if the view of the argument
given in this Essay be just the difficulty, so far from being remote,
would be imminent and immediate. At every period during the progress of
cultivation, from the present moment to the time when the whole earth
was become like a garden, the distress for want of food would be
constantly pressing on all mankind, if they were equal. Though the
produce of the earth might be increasing every year, population would
be increasing much faster, and the redundancy must necessarily be
repressed by the periodical or constant action of misery or vice.
Mr Condorcet's Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des Progres de l'Esprit
Humain, was written, it is said, under the pressure of that cruel
proscription which terminated in his death. If he had no hopes of its
being seen during his life and of its interesting France in his favour,
it is a singular instance of the attachment of a man to principles,
which every day's experience was so fatally for himself contradicting.
To see the human mind in one of the most enlightened nations of the
world, and after a lapse of some thousand years, debased by such a
fermentation of disgusting passions, of fear, cruelty, malice, revenge,
ambition, madness, and folly as would have disgraced the most savage
nation in the most barbarous age must have been such a tremendous shock
to his ideas of the necessary and inevitable progress of the human mind
that nothing but the firmest conviction of the truth of his principles,
in spite of all appearances, could have withstood.
This posthumous publication is only a sketch of a much larger work,
which he proposed should be executed. It necessarily, therefore, wants
that detail and application which can alone prove the truth of any
theory. A few observations will be sufficient to shew how completely
the theory is contradicted when it is applied to the real, and not to
an imaginary, state of things.
In the last division of the work, which treats of the future progress
of man towards perfection, he says, that comparing, in the different
civilized nations of Europe, the actual population with the extent of
territory, and observing their cultivation, their industry, their
divisions of labour, and their means of subsistence, we shall see that
it would be impossible to preserve the same means of subsistence, and,
consequently, the same population, without a number of individuals who
have no other means of supplying their wants than their industry.
Having allowed the necessity of such a class of men, and adverting
afterwards to the precarious revenue of those families that would
depend so entirely on the life and health of their chief, he says, very
justly: 'There exists then, a necessary cause of inequality, of
dependence, and even of misery, which menaces, without ceasing, the
most numerous and active class of our societies.' (To save time and
long quotations, I shall here give the substance of some of Mr
Condorcet's sentiments, and hope I shall not misrepresent them. But I
refer the reader to the work itself, which will amuse, if it does not
convince him.) The difficulty is just and well stated, and I am afraid
that the mode by which he proposes it should be removed will be found
inefficacious. By the application of calculations to the probabilities
of life and the interest of money, he proposes that a fund should be
established which should assure to the old an assistance, produced, in
part, by their own former savings, and, in part, by the savings of
individuals who in making the same sacrifice die before they reap the
benefit of it. The same, or a similar fund, should give assistance to
women and children who lose their husbands, or fathers, and afford a
capital to those who were of an age to found a new family, sufficient
for the proper development of their industry. These establishments, he
observes, might be made in the name and under the protection of the
society. Going still further, he says that, by the just application of
calculations, means might be found of more completely preserving a
state of equality, by preventing credit from being the exclusive
privilege of great fortunes, and yet giving it a basis equally solid,
and by rendering the progress of industry, and the activity of
commerce, less dependent on great capitalists.
Such establishments and calculations may appear very promising upon
paper, but when applied to real life they will be found to be
absolutely nugatory. Mr Condorcet allows that a class of people which
maintains itself entirely by industry is necessary to every state. Why
does he allow this? No other reason can well be assigned than that he
conceives that the labour necessary to procure subsistence for an
extended population will not be performed without the goad of
necessity. If by establishments of this kind of spur to industry be
removed, if the idle and the negligent are placed upon the same footing
with regard to their credit, and the future support of their wives and
families, as the active and industrious, can we expect to see men exert
that animated activity in bettering their condition which now forms the
master spring of public prosperity? If an inquisition were to be
established to examine the claims of each individual and to determine
whether he had or had not exerted himself to the utmost, and to grant
or refuse assistance accordingly, this would be little else than a
repetition upon a larger scale of the English poor laws and would be
completely destructive of the true principles of liberty and equality.
But independent of this great objection to these establishments, and
supposing for a moment that they would give no check to productive
industry, by far the greatest difficulty remains yet behind.
Were every man sure of a comfortable provision for his family, almost
every man would have one, and were the rising generation free from the
'killing frost' of misery, population must rapidly increase. Of this Mr
Condorcet seems to be fully aware himself, and after having described
further improvements, he says:
But in this process of industry and happiness, each generation will be
called to more extended enjoyments, and in consequence, by the physical
constitution of the human frame, to an increase in the number of
individuals. Must not there arrive a period then, when these laws,
equally necessary, shall counteract each other? When the increase of
the number of men surpassing their means of subsistence, the necessary
result must be either a continual diminution of happiness and
population, a movement truly retrograde, or, at least, a kind of
oscillation between good and evil? In societies arrived at this term,
will not this oscillation be a constantly subsisting cause of
periodical misery? Will it not mark the limit when all further
amelioration will become impossible, and point out that term to the
perfectibility of the human race which it may reach in the course of
ages, but can never pass?
He then adds,
There is no person who does not see how very distant such a period is
from us, but shall we ever arrive at it? It is equally impossible to
pronounce for or against the future realization of an event which
cannot take place but at an era when the human race will have attained
improvements, of which we can at present scarcely form a conception.
Mr Condorcet's picture of what may be expected to happen when the
number of men shall surpass the means of their subsistence is justly
drawn. The oscillation which he describes will certainly take place and
will without doubt be a constantly subsisting cause of periodical
misery. The only point in which I differ from Mr Condorcet with regard
to this picture is the period when it may be applied to the human race.
Mr Condorcet thinks that it cannot possibly be applicable but at an era
extremely distant. If the proportion between the natural increase of
population and food which I have given be in any degree near the truth,
it will appear, on the contrary, that the period when the number of men
surpass their means of subsistence has long since arrived, and that
this necessity oscillation, this constantly subsisting cause of
periodical misery, has existed ever since we have had any histories of
mankind, does exist at present, and will for ever continue to exist,
unless some decided change take place in the physical constitution of
our nature.
Mr Condorcet, however, goes on to say that should the period, which he
conceives to be so distant, ever arrive, the human race, and the
advocates for the perfectibility of man, need not be alarmed at it. He
then proceeds to remove the difficulty in a manner which I profess not
to understand. Having observed, that the ridiculous prejudices of
superstition would by that time have ceased to throw over morals a
corrupt and degrading austerity, he alludes, either to a promiscuous
concubinage, which would prevent breeding, or to something else as
unnatural. To remove the difficulty in this way will, surely, in the
opinion of most men, be to destroy that virtue and purity of manners,
which the advocates of equality, and of the perfectibility of man,
profess to be the end and object of their views.