Showing the Estimated Prolificness of Marriages in England at the close
of the Seventeenth Century.
(In the following table the name of the Place is followed in order by:
Number of Inhabitants.
One Annual Marriage, to.
Number of Marriages.
Children to one Marriage.
Total Number of Births.
London : 530,000 : 106 : 5,000 : 4. : 20,000
Large Towns : 870,000 : 128 : 6,800 : 4.5 : 30,000
Small Towns and
Country Places : 4,100,000 : 141 : 29,200 : 4.8 : 140,160
-------------------------------------------
: 5,500,000 : 134 : 41,000 : 4.65 : 190,760
Standing by itself, this table, like most of the others, seems to
support Mr Sadler's theory. But surely London, at the close of the
seventeenth century, was far more thickly peopled than the kingdom
of England now is. Yet the fecundity in London at the close of the
seventeenth century was 4; and the average fecundity of the whole
kingdom now is not more, according to Mr Sadler, than 3 1/2. Then again,
the large towns in 1700 were far more thickly peopled than Westmoreland
and the North Riding of Yorkshire now are. Yet the fecundity in those
large towns was then 4.5. And Mr Sadler tells us that it is now only 4.2
in Westmoreland and the North Riding.
It is scarcely necessary to say anything about the censuses of
the Netherlands, as Mr Sadler himself confesses that there is some
difficulty in reconciling them with his theory, and helps out his
awkward explanation by supposing, quite gratuitously, as it seems to us,
that the official documents are inaccurate. The argument which he has
drawn from the United States will detain us but for a very short time.
He has not told us,--perhaps he had not the means of telling us,--what
proportion the number of births in the different parts of that country
bears to the number of marriages. He shows that in the thinly peopled
states the number of children bears a greater proportion to the number
of grown-up people than in the old states; and this, he conceives, is a
sufficient proof that the condensation of the population is unfavourable
to fecundity. We deny the inference altogether. Nothing can be more
obvious than the explanation of the phenomenon. The back settlements
are for the most part peopled by emigration from the old states; and
emigrants are almost always breeders. They are almost always vigorous
people in the prime of life. Mr Sadler himself, in another part of
his book, in which he tries very unsuccessfully to show that the
rapid multiplication of the people of America is principally owing to
emigration from Europe, states this fact in the plainest manner:
"Nothing is more certain, than that emigration is almost universally
supplied by 'single persons in the beginning of mature life;' nor,
secondly, that such persons, as Dr Franklin long ago asserted, 'marry
and raise families.'
"Nor is this all. It is not more true, that emigrants, generally
speaking, consist of individuals in the prime of life, than that 'they
are the most active and vigorous' of that age, as Dr Seybert describes
them to be. They are, as it respects the principle at issue, a select
class, even compared with that of their own age, generally considered.
Their very object in leaving their native countries is to settle in
life, a phrase that needs no explanation; and they do so. No equal
number of human beings, therefore, have ever given so large or rapid an
increase to a community as 'settlers' have invariably done."
It is perfectly clear that children are more numerous in the back
settlements of America than in the maritime states, not because
unoccupied land makes people prolific, but because the most prolific
people go to the unoccupied land.
Mr Sadler having, as he conceives, fully established his theory of
population by statistical evidence, proceeds to prove, "that it is
in unison, or rather required by the principles of physiology." The
difference between himself and his opponents he states as follows:--
"In pursuing this part of my subject, I must begin by reminding the
reader of the difference between those who hold the superfecundity of
mankind and myself, in regard to those principles which will form the
basis of the present argument. They contend, that production precedes
population; I, on the contrary, maintain that population precedes, and
is indeed the cause of, production. They teach that man breeds up to the
capital, or in proportion to the abundance of the food, he possesses: I
assert, that he is comparatively sterile when he is wealthy, and that
he breeds in proportion to his poverty; not meaning, however, by that
poverty, a state of privation approaching to actual starvation, any more
than, I suppose, they would contend, that extreme and culpable excess
is the grand patron of population. In a word, they hold that a state
of ease and affluence is the great promoter of prolificness. I maintain
that a considerable degree of labour, and even privation, is a more
efficient cause of an increased degree of human fecundity."
To prove this point, he quotes Aristotle, Hippocrates, Dr Short, Dr
Gregory, Dr Perceval, M. Villermi, Lord Bacon, and Rousseau. We will not
dispute about it; for it seems quite clear to us that if he succeeds in
establishing it he overturns his own theory. If men breed in proportion
to their poverty, as he tells us here,--and at the same time breed
in inverse proportion to their numbers, as he told us before,--it
necessarily follows that the poverty of men must be in inverse
proportion to their numbers. Inverse proportion, indeed, as we have
shown, is not the phrase which expresses Mr Sadler's meaning. To
speak more correctly, it follows, from his own positions, that, if one
population be thinner than another, it will also be poorer. Is this the
fact? Mr Sadler tells us, in one of those tables which we have already
quoted, that in the United States the population is four to a square
mile, and the fecundity 5.22 to a marriage, and that in Russia the
population is twenty-three to a square mile, and the fecundity 4.94 to
a marriage. Is the North American labourer poorer than the Russian boor?
If not, what becomes of Mr Sadler's argument?
The most decisive proof of Mr Sadler's theory, according to him, is that
which he has kept for the last. It is derived from the registers of the
English Peerage. The peers, he says, and says truly, are the class with
respect to whom we possess the most accurate statistical information.
"Touching their NUMBER, this has been accurately known and recorded ever
since the order has existed in the country. For several centuries past,
the addition to it of a single individual has been a matter of public
interest and notoriety: this hereditary honour conferring not personal
dignity merely, but important privileges, and being almost always
identified with great wealth and influence. The records relating to
it are kept with the most scrupulous attention, not only by heirs and
expectants, but they are appealed to by more distant connections, as
conferring distinction on all who can claim such affinity. Hence there
are few disputes concerning successions to this rank, but such as go
back to very remote periods. In later times, the marriages, births, and
deaths, of the nobility, have not only been registered by and known to
those personally interested, but have been published periodically, and,
consequently, subject to perpetual correction and revision; while many
of the most powerful motives which can influence the human mind conspire
to preserve these records from the slightest falsification. Compared
with these, therefore, all other registers, or reports, whether of sworn
searchers or others, are incorrectness itself."
Mr Sadler goes on to tell us that the peers are a marrying class, and
that their general longevity proves them to be a healthy class. Still
peerages often become extinct;--and from this fact he infers that they
are a sterile class. So far, says he, from increasing in geometrical
progression, they do not even keep up their numbers. "Nature interdicts
their increase."
"Thus," says he, "in all ages of the world, and in every nation of it,
have the highest ranks of the community been the most sterile, and
the lowest the most prolific. As it respects our own country, from the
lowest grade of society, the Irish peasant, to the highest, the British
peer, this remains a conspicuous truth; and the regulation of the degree
of fecundity conformably to this principle, through the intermediate
gradations of society, constitutes one of the features of the system
developed in these pages."
We take the issue which Mr Sadler has himself offered. We agree with
him, that the registers of the English Peerage are of far higher
authority than any other statistical documents. We are content that
by those registers his principle should be judged. And we meet him by
positively denying his facts. We assert that the English nobles are not
only not a sterile, but an eminently prolific, part of the community.
Mr Sadler concludes that they are sterile, merely because peerages often
become extinct. Is this the proper way of ascertaining the point? Is
it thus that he avails himself of those registers on the accuracy and
fulness of which he descants so largely? Surely his right course would
have been to count the marriages, and the number of births in the
Peerage. This he has not done;--but we have done it. And what is the
result?
It appears from the last edition of Debrett's "Peerage", published in
1828, that there were at that time 287 peers of the United Kingdom,
who had been married once or oftener. The whole number of marriages
contracted by these 287 peers was 333. The number of children by these
marriages was 1437,--more than five to a peer,--more than 4.3 to a
marriage,--more, that is to say, than the average number in those
counties of England in which, according to Mr Sadler's own statement,
the fecundity is the greatest.
But this is not all. These marriages had not, in 1828, produced their
full effect. Some of them had been very lately contracted. In a very
large proportion of them there was every probability of additional
issue. To allow for this probability, we may safely add one to the
average which we have already obtained, and rate the fecundity of a
noble marriage in England at 5.3;--higher than the fecundity which Mr
Sadler assigns to the people of the United States. Even if we do not
make this allowance, the average fecundity of marriages of peers is
higher by one-fifth than the average fecundity of marriages throughout
the kingdom. And this is the sterile class! This is the class which
"Nature has interdicted from increasing!" The evidence to which Mr
Sadler has himself appealed proves that his principle is false,--utterly
false,--wildly and extravagantly false. It proves that a class, living
during half of every year in the most crowded population in the world,
breeds faster than those who live in the country;--that the class which
enjoys the greatest degree of luxury and ease breeds faster than the
class which undergoes labour and privation. To talk a little in Mr
Sadler's style, we must own that we are ourselves surprised at the
results which our examination of the peerage has brought out. We
certainly should have thought that the habits of fashionable life, and
long residence even in the most airy parts of so great a city as London,
would have been more unfavourable to the fecundity of the higher orders
than they appear to be.
Peerages, it is true, often become extinct. But it is quite clear, from
what we have stated, that this is not because peeresses are barren.
There is no difficulty in discovering what the causes really are. In the
first place, most of the titles of our nobles are limited to heirs male;
so that, though the average fecundity of a noble marriage is upwards
of five, yet, for the purpose of keeping up a peerage, it cannot be
reckoned at much more than two and a half. Secondly, though the peers
are, as Mr Sadler says, a marrying class, the younger sons of peers are
decidedly not a marrying class; so that a peer, though he has at least
as great a chance of having a son as his neighbours, has less chance
than they of having a collateral heir.
We have now disposed, we think, of Mr Sadler's principle of population.
Our readers must, by this time, be pretty well satisfied as to his
qualifications for setting up theories of his own. We will, therefore,
present them with a few instances of the skill and fairness which he
shows when he undertakes to pull down the theories of other men. The
doctrine of Mr Malthus, that population, if not checked by want,
by vice, by excessive mortality, or by the prudent self-denial of
individuals, would increase in a geometric progression, is, in Mr
Sadler's opinion, at once false and atrocious.
"It may at once be denied," says he, "that human increase proceeds
geometrically; and for this simple but decisive reason, that the
existence of a geometrical ratio of increase in the works of nature
is neither true nor possible. It would fling into utter confusion all
order, time, magnitude, and space."
This is as curious a specimen of reasoning as any that has been offered
to the world since the days when theories were founded on the principle
that nature abhors a vacuum. We proceed a few pages further, however;
and we then find that geometric progression is unnatural only in those
cases in which Mr Malthus conceives that it exists; and that, in all
cases in which Mr Malthus denies the existence of a geometric ratio,
nature changes sides, and adopts that ratio as the rule of increase.
Mr Malthus holds that subsistence will increase only in an arithmetical
ratio. "As far as nature has to do with the question," says Mr Sadler,
"men might, for instance, plant twice the number of peas, and breed
from a double number of the same animals, with equal prospect of their
multiplication." Now, if Mr Sadler thinks that, as far as nature is
concerned, four sheep will double as fast as two, and eight as fast as
four, how can he deny that the geometrical ratio of increase does
exist in the works of nature? Or has he a definition of his own for
geometrical progression, as well as for inverse proportion?
Mr Malthus, and those who agree with him, have generally referred to
the United States, as a country in which the human race increases in a
geometrical ratio, and have fixed on thirty-five years as the term in
which the population of that country doubles itself. Mr Sadler contends
that it is physically impossible for a people to double in twenty-five
years; nay, that thirty-five years is far too short a period,--that
the Americans do not double by procreation in less than forty-seven
years,--and that the rapid increase of their numbers is produced by
emigration from Europe.
Emigration has certainly had some effect in increasing the population of
the United States. But so great has the rate of that increase been that,
after making full allowance for the effect of emigration, there will be
a residue, attributable to procreation alone, amply sufficient to double
the population in twenty-five years.