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Title: An Essay on the Principle of Population

Author: T. R. Malthus

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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ESSAY ON
THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION ***

An Essay on the Principle of
Population

Thomas Malthus

1798

AN ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION, AS IT AFFECTS THE
FUTURE IMPROVEMENT OF SOCIETY WITH REMARKS ON THE
SPECULATIONS OF MR. GODWIN, M. CONDORCET, AND OTHER
WRITERS.

LONDON, PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, IN ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD,
1798.

Preface

The following Essay owes its origin to a conversation with a friend, on
the subject of Mr Godwin's essay on avarice and profusion, in his Enquirer.
The discussion started the general question of the future improvement of
society, and the Author at first sat down with an intention of merely stating
his thoughts to his friend, upon paper, in a clearer manner than he thought
he could do in conversation. But as the subject opened upon him, some
ideas occurred, which he did not recollect to have met with before; and as
he conceived that every least light, on a topic so generally interesting, might
be received with candour, he determined to put his thoughts in a form for
publication.

The Essay might, undoubtedly, have been rendered much more complete
by a collection of a greater number of facts in elucidation of the general

argument. But a long and almost total interruption from very particular
business, joined to a desire (perhaps imprudent) of not delaying the
publication much beyond the time that he originally proposed, prevented
the Author from giving to the subject an undivided attention. He presumes,
however, that the facts which he has adduced will be found to form no
inconsiderable evidence for the truth of his opinion respecting the future
improvement of mankind. As the Author contemplates this opinion at
present, little more appears to him to be necessary than a plain statement, in
addition to the most cursory view of society, to establish it.

It is an obvious truth, which has been taken notice of by many writers,
that population must always be kept down to the level of the means of
subsistence; but no writer that the Author recollects has inquired
particularly into the means by which this level is effected: and it is a view
of these means which forms, to his mind, the strongest obstacle in the way
to any very great future improvement of society. He hopes it will appear
that, in the discussion of this interesting subject, he is actuated solely by a
love of truth, and not by any prejudices against any particular set of men, or
of opinions. He professes to have read some of the speculations on the
future improvement of society in a temper very different from a wish to find
them visionary, but he has not acquired that command over his
understanding which would enable him to believe what he wishes, without
evidence, or to refuse his assent to what might be unpleasing, when
accompanied with evidence.

The view which he has given of human life has a melancholy hue, but he
feels conscious that he has drawn these dark tints from a conviction that
they are really in the picture, and not from a jaundiced eye or an inherent
spleen of disposition. The theory of mind which he has sketched in the two
last chapters accounts to his own understanding in a satisfactory manner for
the existence of most of the evils of life, but whether it will have the same
effect upon others must be left to the judgement of his readers.

If he should succeed in drawing the attention of more able men to what
he conceives to be the principal difficulty in the way to the improvement of
society and should, in consequence, see this difficulty removed, even in

theory, he will gladly retract his present opinions and rejoice in a conviction
of his error.

7 June 1798

CHAPTER 1
Question stated—Little prospect of a determination of it, from the enmity of the
opposing parties—The principal argument against the perfectibility of man and
of society has never been fairly answered—Nature of the difficulty arising from
population—Outline of the principal argument of the Essay

The great and unlooked for discoveries that have taken place of late
years in natural philosophy, the increasing diffusion of general knowledge
from the extension of the art of printing, the ardent and unshackled spirit of
inquiry that prevails throughout the lettered and even unlettered world, the
new and extraordinary lights that have been thrown on political subjects
which dazzle and astonish the understanding, and particularly that
tremendous phenomenon in the political horizon, the French Revolution,
which, like a blazing comet, seems destined either to inspire with fresh life
and vigour, or to scorch up and destroy the shrinking inhabitants of the
earth, have all concurred to lead many able men into the opinion that we
were touching on a period big with the most important changes, changes
that would in some measure be decisive of the future fate of mankind.

It has been said that the great question is now at issue, whether man shall
henceforth start forwards with accelerated velocity towards illimitable, and
hitherto unconceived improvement, or be condemned to a perpetual
oscillation between happiness and misery, and after every effort remain still
at an immeasurable distance from the wished-for goal.

Yet, anxiously as every friend of mankind must look forwards to the
termination of this painful suspense, and eagerly as the inquiring mind

would hail every ray of light that might assist its view into futurity, it is
much to be lamented that the writers on each side of this momentous
question still keep far aloof from each other. Their mutual arguments do not
meet with a candid examination. The question is not brought to rest on
fewer points, and even in theory scarcely seems to be approaching to a
decision.

The advocate for the present order of things is apt to treat the sect of
speculative philosophers either as a set of artful and designing knaves who
preach up ardent benevolence and draw captivating pictures of a happier
state of society only the better to enable them to destroy the present
establishments and to forward their own deep-laid schemes of ambition, or
as wild and mad-headed enthusiasts whose silly speculations and absurd
paradoxes are not worthy the attention of any reasonable man.

The advocate for the perfectibility of man, and of society, retorts on the
defender of establishments a more than equal contempt. He brands him as
the slave of the most miserable and narrow prejudices; or as the defender of
the abuses of civil society only because he profits by them. He paints him
either as a character who prostitutes his understanding to his interest, or as
one whose powers of mind are not of a size to grasp any thing great and
noble, who cannot see above five yards before him, and who must therefore
be utterly unable to take in the views of the enlightened benefactor of
mankind.

In this unamicable contest the cause of truth cannot but suffer. The really
good arguments on each side of the question are not allowed to have their
proper weight. Each pursues his own theory, little solicitous to correct or
improve it by an attention to what is advanced by his opponents.

The friend of the present order of things condemns all political
speculations in the gross. He will not even condescend to examine the
grounds from which the perfectibility of society is inferred. Much less will
he give himself the trouble in a fair and candid manner to attempt an
exposition of their fallacy.

The speculative philosopher equally offends against the cause of truth.
With eyes fixed on a happier state of society, the blessings of which he

paints in the most captivating colours, he allows himself to indulge in the
most bitter invectives against every present establishment, without applying
his talents to consider the best and safest means of removing abuses and
without seeming to be aware of the tremendous obstacles that threaten, even
in theory, to oppose the progress of man towards perfection.

It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always
be confirmed by experiment. Yet so much friction, and so many minute
circumstances occur in practice, which it is next to impossible for the most
enlarged and penetrating mind to foresee, that on few subjects can any
theory be pronounced just, till all the arguments against it have been
maturely weighed and clearly and consistently refuted.

I have read some of the speculations on the perfectibility of man and of
society with great pleasure. I have been warmed and delighted with the
enchanting picture which they hold forth. I ardently wish for such happy
improvements. But I see great, and, to my understanding, unconquerable
difficulties in the way to them. These difficulties it is my present purpose to
state, declaring, at the same time, that so far from exulting in them, as a
cause of triumph over the friends of innovation, nothing would give me
greater pleasure than to see them completely removed.

The most important argument that I shall adduce is certainly not new.
The principles on which it depends have been explained in part by Hume,
and more at large by Dr Adam Smith. It has been advanced and applied to
the present subject, though not with its proper weight, or in the most
forcible point of view, by Mr Wallace, and it may probably have been stated
by many writers that I have never met with. I should certainly therefore not
think of advancing it again, though I mean to place it in a point of view in
some degree different from any that I have hitherto seen, if it had ever been
fairly and satisfactorily answered.

The cause of this neglect on the part of the advocates for the
perfectibility of mankind is not easily accounted for. I cannot doubt the
talents of such men as Godwin and Condorcet. I am unwilling to doubt their
candour. To my understanding, and probably to that of most others, the
difficulty appears insurmountable. Yet these men of acknowledged ability
and penetration scarcely deign to notice it, and hold on their course in such

speculations with unabated ardour and undiminished confidence. I have
certainly no right to say that they purposely shut their eyes to such
arguments. I ought rather to doubt the validity of them, when neglected by
such men, however forcibly their truth may strike my own mind. Yet in this
respect it must be acknowledged that we are all of us too prone to err. If I
saw a glass of wine repeatedly presented to a man, and he took no notice of
it, I should be apt to think that he was blind or uncivil. A juster philosophy
might teach me rather to think that my eyes deceived me and that the offer
was not really what I conceived it to be.

In entering upon the argument I must premise that I put out of the
question, at present, all mere conjectures, that is, all suppositions, the
probable realization of which cannot be inferred upon any just
philosophical grounds. A writer may tell me that he thinks man will
ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him. But before
he can expect to bring any reasonable person over to his opinion, he ought
to shew that the necks of mankind have been gradually elongating, that the
lips have grown harder and more prominent, that the legs and feet are daily
altering their shape, and that the hair is beginning to change into stubs of
feathers. And till the probability of so wonderful a conversion can be
shewn, it is surely lost time and lost eloquence to expatiate on the happiness
of man in such a state; to describe his powers, both of running and flying, to
paint him in a condition where all narrow luxuries would be contemned,
where he would be employed only in collecting the necessaries of life, and
where, consequently, each man's share of labour would be light, and his
portion of leisure ample.

I think I may fairly make two postulata.

First, That food is necessary to the existence of man.

Secondly, That the passion between the sexes is necessary and will
remain nearly in its present state.

These two laws, ever since we have had any knowledge of mankind,
appear to have been fixed laws of our nature, and, as we have not hitherto
seen any alteration in them, we have no right to conclude that they will ever
cease to be what they now are, without an immediate act of power in that

Being who first arranged the system of the universe, and for the advantage
of his creatures, still executes, according to fixed laws, all its various
operations.

I do not know that any writer has supposed that on this earth man will
ultimately be able to live without food. But Mr Godwin has conjectured that
the passion between the sexes may in time be extinguished. As, however, he
calls this part of his work a deviation into the land of conjecture, I will not
dwell longer upon it at present than to say that the best arguments for the
perfectibility of man are drawn from a contemplation of the great progress
that he has already made from the savage state and the difficulty of saying
where he is to stop. But towards the extinction of the passion between the
sexes, no progress whatever has hitherto been made. It appears to exist in as
much force at present as it did two thousand or four thousand years ago.
There are individual exceptions now as there always have been. But, as
these exceptions do not appear to increase in number, it would surely be a
very unphilosophical mode of arguing to infer, merely from the existence of
an exception, that the exception would, in time, become the rule, and the
rule the exception.

Assuming then my postulata as granted, I say, that the power of
population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce
subsistence for man.

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.
Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance
with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of
the second.

By that law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man,
the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal.

This implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from
the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall somewhere and must
necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind.

Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, nature has scattered the
seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand. She has been

comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to rear
them. The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with ample
food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds in the
course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious all pervading law
of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants
and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law. And the race
of man cannot, by any efforts of reason, escape from it. Among plants and
animals its effects are waste of seed, sickness, and premature death. Among
mankind, misery and vice. The former, misery, is an absolutely necessary
consequence of it. Vice is a highly probable consequence, and we therefore
see it abundantly prevail, but it ought not, perhaps, to be called an
absolutely necessary consequence. The ordeal of virtue is to resist all
temptation to evil.

This natural inequality of the two powers of population and of
production in the earth, and that great law of our nature which must
constantly keep their effects equal, form the great difficulty that to me
appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society. All other
arguments are of slight and subordinate consideration in comparison of this.
I see no way by which man can escape from the weight of this law which
pervades all animated nature. No fancied equality, no agrarian regulations in
their utmost extent, could remove the pressure of it even for a single
century. And it appears, therefore, to be decisive against the possible
existence of a society, all the members of which should live in ease,
happiness, and comparative leisure; and feel no anxiety about providing the
means of subsistence for themselves and families.

Consequently, if the premises are just, the argument is conclusive against
the perfectibility of the mass of mankind.

I have thus sketched the general outline of the argument, but I will
examine it more particularly, and I think it will be found that experience,
the true source and foundation of all knowledge, invariably confirms its
truth.

CHAPTER 2
The different ratio in which population and food increase—The necessary effects
of these different ratios of increase—Oscillation produced by them in the
condition of the lower classes of society—Reasons why this oscillation has not
been so much observed as might be expected—Three propositions on which the
general argument of the Essay depends—The different states in which mankind
have been known to exist proposed to be examined with reference to these three
propositions.

I said that population, when unchecked, increased in a geometrical ratio,
and subsistence for man in an arithmetical ratio.

Let us examine whether this position be just. I think it will be allowed,
that no state has hitherto existed (at least that we have any account of)
where the manners were so pure and simple, and the means of subsistence
so abundant, that no check whatever has existed to early marriages, among
the lower classes, from a fear of not providing well for their families, or
among the higher classes, from a fear of lowering their condition in life.
Consequently in no state that we have yet known has the power of
population been left to exert itself with perfect freedom.

Whether the law of marriage be instituted or not, the dictate of nature
and virtue seems to be an early attachment to one woman. Supposing a
liberty of changing in the case of an unfortunate choice, this liberty would
not affect population till it arose to a height greatly vicious; and we are now
supposing the existence of a society where vice is scarcely known.

In a state therefore of great equality and virtue, where pure and simple
manners prevailed, and where the means of subsistence were so abundant
that no part of the society could have any fears about providing amply for a
family, the power of population being left to exert itself unchecked, the
increase of the human species would evidently be much greater than any
increase that has been hitherto known.

In the United States of America, where the means of subsistence have
been more ample, the manners of the people more pure, and consequently

the checks to early marriages fewer, than in any of the modern states of
Europe, the population has been found to double itself in twenty-five years.

This ratio of increase, though short of the utmost power of population,
yet as the result of actual experience, we will take as our rule, and say, that
population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five
years or increases in a geometrical ratio.

Let us now take any spot of earth, this Island for instance, and see in
what ratio the subsistence it affords can be supposed to increase. We will
begin with it under its present state of cultivation.

If I allow that by the best possible policy, by breaking up more land and
by great encouragements to agriculture, the produce of this Island may be
doubled in the first twenty-five years, I think it will be allowing as much as
any person can well demand.

In the next twenty-five years, it is impossible to suppose that the produce
could be quadrupled. It would be contrary to all our knowledge of the
qualities of land. The very utmost that we can conceive, is, that the increase
in the second twenty-five years might equal the present produce. Let us then
take this for our rule, though certainly far beyond the truth, and allow that,
by great exertion, the whole produce of the Island might be increased every
twenty-five years, by a quantity of subsistence equal to what it at present
produces. The most enthusiastic speculator cannot suppose a greater
increase than this. In a few centuries it would make every acre of land in the
Island like a garden.

Yet this ratio of increase is evidently arithmetical.

It may be fairly said, therefore, that the means of subsistence increase in
an arithmetical ratio. Let us now bring the effects of these two ratios
together.

The population of the Island is computed to be about seven millions, and
we will suppose the present produce equal to the support of such a number.
In the first twenty-five years the population would be fourteen millions, and
the food being also doubled, the means of subsistence would be equal to

this increase. In the next twenty-five years the population would be twenty-
eight millions, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of
twenty-one millions. In the next period, the population would be fifty-six
millions, and the means of subsistence just sufficient for half that number.
And at the conclusion of the first century the population would be one
hundred and twelve millions and the means of subsistence only equal to the
support of thirty-five millions, which would leave a population of seventy-
seven millions totally unprovided for.

A great emigration necessarily implies unhappiness of some kind or
other in the country that is deserted. For few persons will leave their
families, connections, friends, and native land, to seek a settlement in
untried foreign climes, without some strong subsisting causes of uneasiness
where they are, or the hope of some great advantages in the place to which
they are going.

But to make the argument more general and less interrupted by the
partial views of emigration, let us take the whole earth, instead of one spot,
and suppose that the restraints to population were universally removed. If
the subsistence for man that the earth affords was to be increased every
twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what the whole world at present
produces, this would allow the power of production in the earth to be
absolutely unlimited, and its ratio of increase much greater than we can
conceive that any possible exertions of mankind could make it.

Taking the population of the world at any number, a thousand millions,
for instance, the human species would increase in the ratio of—1, 2, 4, 8,
16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, etc. and subsistence as—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,
10, etc. In two centuries and a quarter, the population would be to the means
of subsistence as 512 to 10: in three centuries as 4096 to 13, and in two
thousand years the difference would be almost incalculable, though the
produce in that time would have increased to an immense extent.

No limits whatever are placed to the productions of the earth; they may
increase for ever and be greater than any assignable quantity, yet still the
power of population being a power of a superior order, the increase of the
human species can only be kept commensurate to the increase of the means

of subsistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity
acting as a check upon the greater power.

The effects of this check remain now to be considered.

Among plants and animals the view of the subject is simple. They are all
impelled by a powerful instinct to the increase of their species, and this
instinct is interrupted by no reasoning or doubts about providing for their
offspring. Wherever therefore there is liberty, the power of increase is
exerted, and the superabundant effects are repressed afterwards by want of
room and nourishment, which is common to animals and plants, and among
animals by becoming the prey of others.

The effects of this check on man are more complicated. Impelled to the
increase of his species by an equally powerful instinct, reason interrupts his
career and asks him whether he may not bring beings into the world for
whom he cannot provide the means of subsistence. In a state of equality,
this would be the simple question. In the present state of society, other
considerations occur. Will he not lower his rank in life? Will he not subject
himself to greater difficulties than he at present feels? Will he not be
obliged to labour harder? and if he has a large family, will his utmost
exertions enable him to support them? May he not see his offspring in rags
and misery, and clamouring for bread that he cannot give them? And may
he not be reduced to the grating necessity of forfeiting his independence,
and of being obliged to the sparing hand of charity for support?

These considerations are calculated to prevent, and certainly do prevent,
a very great number in all civilized nations from pursuing the dictate of
nature in an early attachment to one woman. And this restraint almost
necessarily, though not absolutely so, produces vice. Yet in all societies,
even those that are most vicious, the tendency to a virtuous attachment is so
strong that there is a constant effort towards an increase of population. This
constant effort as constantly tends to subject the lower classes of the society
to distress and to prevent any great permanent amelioration of their
condition.

The way in which, these effects are produced seems to be this. We will
suppose the means of subsistence in any country just equal to the easy

support of its inhabitants. The constant effort towards population, which is
found to act even in the most vicious societies, increases the number of
people before the means of subsistence are increased. The food therefore
which before supported seven millions must now be divided among seven
millions and a half or eight millions. The poor consequently must live much
worse, and many of them be reduced to severe distress. The number of
labourers also being above the proportion of the work in the market, the
price of labour must tend toward a decrease, while the price of provisions
would at the same time tend to rise. The labourer therefore must work
harder to earn the same as he did before. During this season of distress, the
discouragements to marriage, and the difficulty of rearing a family are so
great that population is at a stand. In the mean time the cheapness of labour,
the plenty of labourers, and the necessity of an increased industry amongst
them, encourage cultivators to employ more labour upon their land, to turn
up fresh soil, and to manure and improve more completely what is already
in tillage, till ultimately the means of subsistence become in the same
proportion to the population as at the period from which we set out. The
situation of the labourer being then again tolerably comfortable, the
restraints to population are in some degree loosened, and the same
retrograde and progressive movements with respect to happiness are
repeated.

This sort of oscillation will not be remarked by superficial observers,
and it may be difficult even for the most penetrating mind to calculate its
periods. Yet that in all old states some such vibration does exist, though
from various transverse causes, in a much less marked, and in a much more
irregular manner than I have described it, no reflecting man who considers
the subject deeply can well doubt.

Many reasons occur why this oscillation has been less obvious, and less
decidedly confirmed by experience, than might naturally be expected.

One principal reason is that the histories of mankind that we possess are
histories only of the higher classes. We have but few accounts that can be
depended upon of the manners and customs of that part of mankind where
these retrograde and progressive movements chiefly take place. A
satisfactory history of this kind, on one people, and of one period, would

require the constant and minute attention of an observing mind during a
long life. Some of the objects of inquiry would be, in what proportion to the
number of adults was the number of marriages, to what extent vicious
customs prevailed in consequence of the restraints upon matrimony, what
was the comparative mortality among the children of the most distressed
part of the community and those who lived rather more at their ease, what
were the variations in the real price of labour, and what were the observable
differences in the state of the lower classes of society with respect to ease
and happiness, at different times during a certain period.

Such a history would tend greatly to elucidate the manner in which the
constant check upon population acts and would probably prove the
existence of the retrograde and progressive movements that have been
mentioned, though the times of their vibrations must necessarily be
rendered irregular from the operation of many interrupting causes, such as
the introduction or failure of certain manufactures, a greater or less
prevalent spirit of agricultural enterprise, years of plenty, or years of
scarcity, wars and pestilence, poor laws, the invention of processes for
shortening labour without the proportional extension of the market for the
commodity, and, particularly, the difference between the nominal and real
price of labour, a circumstance which has perhaps more than any other
contributed to conceal this oscillation from common view.

It very rarely happens that the nominal price of labour universally falls,
but we well know that it frequently remains the same, while the nominal
price of provisions has been gradually increasing. This is, in effect, a real
fall in the price of labour, and during this period the condition of the lower
orders of the community must gradually grow worse and worse. But the
farmers and capitalists are growing rich from the real cheapness of labour.
Their increased capitals enable them to employ a greater number of men.
Work therefore may be plentiful, and the price of labour would
consequently rise. But the want of freedom in the market of labour, which
occurs more or less in all communities, either from parish laws, or the more
general cause of the facility of combination among the rich, and its
difficulty among the poor, operates to prevent the price of labour from
rising at the natural period, and keeps it down some time longer; perhaps till

a year of scarcity, when the clamour is too loud and the necessity too
apparent to be resisted.

The true cause of the advance in the price of labour is thus concealed,
and the rich affect to grant it as an act of compassion and favour to the poor,
in consideration of a year of scarcity, and, when plenty returns, indulge
themselves in the most unreasonable of all complaints, that the price does
not again fall, when a little rejection would shew them that it must have
risen long before but from an unjust conspiracy of their own.

But though the rich by unfair combinations contribute frequently to
prolong a season of distress among the poor, yet no possible form of society
could prevent the almost constant action of misery upon a great part of
mankind, if in a state of inequality, and upon all, if all were equal.

The theory on which the truth of this position depends appears to me so
extremely clear that I feel at a loss to conjecture what part of it can be
denied.

That population cannot increase without the means of subsistence is a
proposition so evident that it needs no illustration.

That population does invariably increase where there are the means of
subsistence, the history of every people that have ever existed will
abundantly prove.

And that the superior power of population cannot be checked without
producing misery or vice, the ample portion of these too bitter ingredients
in the cup of human life and the continuance of the physical causes that
seem to have produced them bear too convincing a testimony.

But, in order more fully to ascertain the validity of these three
propositions, let us examine the different states in which mankind have
been known to exist. Even a cursory review will, I think, be sufficient to
convince us that these propositions are incontrovertible truths.

CHAPTER 3
The savage or hunter state shortly reviewed—The shepherd state, or the tribes of
barbarians that overran the Roman Empire—The superiority of the power of
population to the means of subsistence—the cause of the great tide of Northern
Emigration.

In the rudest state of mankind, in which hunting is the principal
occupation, and the only mode of acquiring food; the means of subsistence
being scattered over a large extent of territory, the comparative population
must necessarily be thin. It is said that the passion between the sexes is less
ardent among the North American Indians, than among any other race of
men. Yet, notwithstanding this apathy, the effort towards population, even
in this people, seems to be always greater than the means to support it. This
appears, from the comparatively rapid population that takes place,
whenever any of the tribes happen to settle in some fertile spot, and to draw
nourishment from more fruitful sources than that of hunting; and it has been
frequently remarked that when an Indian family has taken up its abode near
any European settlement, and adopted a more easy and civilized mode of
life, that one woman has reared five, or six, or more children; though in the
savage state it rarely happens that above one or two in a family grow up to
maturity. The same observation has been made with regard to the Hottentots
near the Cape. These facts prove the superior power of population to the
means of subsistence in nations of hunters, and that this power always
shews itself the moment it is left to act with freedom.

It remains to inquire whether this power can be checked, and its effects
kept equal to the means of subsistence, without vice or misery.

The North American Indians, considered as a people, cannot justly be
called free and equal. In all the accounts we have of them, and, indeed, of
most other savage nations, the women are represented as much more
completely in a state of slavery to the men than the poor are to the rich in
civilized countries. One half the nation appears to act as Helots to the other
half, and the misery that checks population falls chiefly, as it always must

do, upon that part whose condition is lowest in the scale of society. The
infancy of man in the simplest state requires considerable attention, but this
necessary attention the women cannot give, condemned as they are to the
inconveniences and hardships of frequent change of place and to the
constant and unremitting drudgery of preparing every thing for the
reception of their tyrannic lords. These exertions, sometimes during
pregnancy or with children at their backs, must occasion frequent
miscarriages, and prevent any but the most robust infants from growing to
maturity. Add to these hardships of the women the constant war that
prevails among savages, and the necessity which they frequently labour
under of exposing their aged and helpless parents, and of thus violating the
first feelings of nature, and the picture will not appear very free from the
blot of misery. In estimating the happiness of a savage nation, we must not
fix our eyes only on the warrior in the prime of life: he is one of a hundred:
he is the gentleman, the man of fortune, the chances have been in his favour
and many efforts have failed ere this fortunate being was produced, whose
guardian genius should preserve him through the numberless dangers with
which he would be surrounded from infancy to manhood. The true points of
comparison between two nations seem to be the ranks in each which appear
nearest to answer to each other. And in this view, I should compare the
warriors in the prime of life with the gentlemen, and the women, children,
and aged, with the lower classes of the community in civilized states.

May we not then fairly infer from this short review, or rather, from the
accounts that may be referred to of nations of hunters, that their population
is thin from the scarcity of food, that it would immediately increase if food
was in greater plenty, and that, putting vice out of the question among
savages, misery is the check that represses the superior power of population
and keeps its effects equal to the means of subsistence. Actual observation
and experience tell us that this check, with a few local and temporary
exceptions, is constantly acting now upon all savage nations, and the theory
indicates that it probably acted with nearly equal strength a thousand years
ago, and it may not be much greater a thousand years hence.

Of the manners and habits that prevail among nations of shepherds, the
next state of mankind, we are even more ignorant than of the savage state.
But that these nations could not escape the general lot of misery arising

from the want of subsistence, Europe, and all the fairest countries in the
world, bear ample testimony. Want was the goad that drove the Scythian
shepherds from their native haunts, like so many famished wolves in search
of prey. Set in motion by this all powerful cause, clouds of Barbarians
seemed to collect from all points of the northern hemisphere. Gathering
fresh darkness and terror as they rolled on, the congregated bodies at length
obscured the sun of Italy and sunk the whole world in universal night.
These tremendous effects, so long and so deeply felt throughout the fairest
portions of the earth, may be traced to the simple cause of the superior
power of population to the means of subsistence.

It is well known that a country in pasture cannot support so many
inhabitants as a country in tillage, but what renders nations of shepherds so
formidable is the power which they possess of moving all together and the
necessity they frequently feel of exerting this power in search of fresh
pasture for their herds. A tribe that was rich in cattle had an immediate
plenty of food. Even the parent stock might be devoured in a case of
absolute necessity. The women lived in greater ease than among nations of
hunters. The men bold in their united strength and confiding in their power
of procuring pasture for their cattle by change of place, felt, probably, but
few fears about providing for a family. These combined causes soon
produced their natural and invariable effect, an extended population. A more
frequent and rapid change of place became then necessary. A wider and
more extensive territory was successively occupied. A broader desolation
extended all around them. Want pinched the less fortunate members of the
society, and, at length, the impossibility of supporting such a number
together became too evident to be resisted. Young scions were then pushed
out from the parent-stock and instructed to explore fresh regions and to gain
happier seats for themselves by their swords. 'The world was all before
them where to choose.' Restless from present distress, flushed with the hope
of fairer prospects, and animated with the spirit of hardy enterprise, these
daring adventurers were likely to become formidable adversaries to all who
opposed them. The peaceful inhabitants of the countries on which they
rushed could not long withstand the energy of men acting under such
powerful motives of exertion. And when they fell in with any tribes like
their own, the contest was a struggle for existence, and they fought with a

desperate courage, inspired by the rejection that death was the punishment
of defeat and life the prize of victory.

In these savage contests many tribes must have been utterly
exterminated. Some, probably, perished by hardship and famine. Others,
whose leading star had given them a happier direction, became great and
powerful tribes, and, in their turns, sent off fresh adventurers in search of
still more fertile seats. The prodigious waste of human life occasioned by
this perpetual struggle for room and food was more than supplied by the
mighty power of population, acting, in some degree, unshackled from the
consent habit of emigration. The tribes that migrated towards the South,
though they won these more fruitful regions by continual battles, rapidly
increased in number and power, from the increased means of subsistence.
Till at length the whole territory, from the confines of China to the shores of
the Baltic, was peopled by a various race of Barbarians, brave, robust, and
enterprising, inured to hardship, and delighting in war. Some tribes
maintained their independence. Others ranged themselves under the
standard of some barbaric chieftain who led them to victory after victory,
and what was of more importance, to regions abounding in corn, wine, and
oil, the long wished for consummation, and great reward of their labours.
An Alaric, an Attila, or a Zingis Khan, and the chiefs around them, might
fight for glory, for the fame of extensive conquests, but the true cause that
set in motion the great tide of northern emigration, and that continued to
propel it till it rolled at different periods against China, Persia, Italy, and
even Egypt, was a scarcity of food, a population extended beyond the
means of supporting it.

The absolute population at any one period, in proportion to the extent of
territory, could never be great, on account of the unproductive nature of
some of the regions occupied; but there appears to have been a most rapid
succession of human beings, and as fast as some were mowed down by the
scythe of war or of famine, others rose in increased numbers to supply their
place. Among these bold and improvident Barbarians, population was
probably but little checked, as in modern states, from a fear of future
difficulties. A prevailing hope of bettering their condition by change of
place, a constant expectation of plunder, a power even, if distressed, of
selling their children as slaves, added to the natural carelessness of the

barbaric character, all conspired to raise a population which remained to be
repressed afterwards by famine or war.

Where there is any inequality of conditions, and among nations of
shepherds this soon takes place, the distress arising from a scarcity of
provisions must fall hardest upon the least fortunate members of the society.
This distress also must frequently have been felt by the women, exposed to
casual plunder in the absence of their husbands, and subject to continual
disappointments in their expected return.

But without knowing enough of the minute and intimate history of these
people, to point out precisely on what part the distress for want of food
chiefly fell, and to what extent it was generally felt, I think we may fairly
say, from all the accounts that we have of nations of shepherds, that
population invariably increased among them whenever, by emigration or
any other cause, the means of subsistence were increased, and that a further
population was checked, and the actual population kept equal to the means
of subsistence, by misery and vice.

For, independently of any vicious customs that might have prevailed
amongst them with regard to women, which always operate as checks to
population, it must be acknowledged, I think, that the commission of war is
vice, and the effect of it misery, and none can doubt the misery of want of
food.

CHAPTER 4
State of civilized nations—Probability that Europe is much more populous now
than in the time of Julius Caesar—Best criterion of population—Probable error
of Hume in one the criterions that he proposes as assisting in an estimate of
population—Slow increase of population at present in most of the states of
Europe—The two principal checks to population—The first, or preventive check
examined with regard to England.

In examining the next state of mankind with relation to the question
before us, the state of mixed pasture and tillage, in which with some
variation in the proportions the most civilized nations must always remain,
we shall be assisted in our review by what we daily see around us, by actual
experience, by facts that come within the scope of every man's observation.

Notwithstanding the exaggerations of some old historians, there can
remain no doubt in the mind of any thinking man that the population of the
principal countries of Europe, France, England, Germany, Russia, Poland,
Sweden, and Denmark is much greater than ever it was in former times. The
obvious reason of these exaggerations is the formidable aspect that even a
thinly peopled nation must have, when collected together and moving all at
once in search of fresh seats. If to this tremendous appearance be added a
succession at certain intervals of similar emigrations, we shall not be much
surprised that the fears of the timid nations of the South represented the
North as a region absolutely swarming with human beings. A nearer and
juster view of the subject at present enables us to see that the inference was
as absurd as if a man in this country, who was continually meeting on the
road droves of cattle from Wales and the North, was immediately to
conclude that these countries were the most productive of all the parts of the
kingdom.

The reason that the greater part of Europe is more populous now than it
was in former times, is that the industry of the inhabitants has made these
countries produce a greater quantity of human subsistence. For I conceive
that it may be laid down as a position not to be controverted, that, taking a
sufficient extent of territory to include within it exportation and
importation, and allowing some variation for the prevalence of luxury, or of
frugal habits, that population constantly bears a regular proportion to the
food that the earth is made to produce. In the controversy concerning the
populousness of ancient and modern nations, could it be clearly ascertained
that the average produce of the countries in question, taken altogether, is
greater now than it was in the times of Julius Caesar, the dispute would be
at once determined.

When we are assured that China is the most fertile country in the world,
that almost all the land is in tillage, and that a great part of it bears two

crops every year, and further, that the people live very frugally, we may
infer with certainty that the population must be immense, without busying
ourselves in inquiries into the manners and habits of the lower classes and
the encouragements to early marriages. But these inquiries are of the utmost
importance, and a minute history of the customs of the lower Chinese
would be of the greatest use in ascertaining in what manner the checks to a
further population operate; what are the vices, and what are the distresses
that prevent an increase of numbers beyond the ability of the country to
support.

Hume, in his essay on the populousness of ancient and modern nations,
when he intermingles, as he says, an inquiry concerning causes with that
concerning facts, does not seem to see with his usual penetration how very
little some of the causes he alludes to could enable him to form any
judgement of the actual population of ancient nations. If any inference can
be drawn from them, perhaps it should be directly the reverse of what
Hume draws, though I certainly ought to speak with great diffidence in
dissenting from a man who of all others on such subjects was the least
likely to be deceived by first appearances. If I find that at a certain period in
ancient history, the encouragements to have a family were great, that early
marriages were consequently very prevalent, and that few persons remained
single, I should infer with certainty that population was rapidly increasing,
but by no means that it was then actually very great, rather; indeed, the
contrary, that it was then thin and that there was room and food for a much
greater number. On the other hand, if I find that at this period the difficulties
attending a family were very great, that, consequently, few early marriages
took place, and that a great number of both sexes remained single, I infer
with certainty that population was at a stand, and, probably, because the
actual population was very great in proportion to the fertility of the land and
that there was scarcely room and food for more. The number of footmen,
housemaids, and other persons remaining unmarried in modern states,
Hume allows to be rather an argument against their population. I should
rather draw a contrary inference and consider it an argument of their
fullness, though this inference is not certain, because there are many thinly
inhabited states that are yet stationary in their population. To speak,
therefore, correctly, perhaps it may be said that the number of unmarried
persons in proportion to the whole number, existing at different periods, in

the same or different states will enable us to judge whether population at
these periods was increasing, stationary, or decreasing, but will form no
criterion by which we can determine the actual population.

There is, however, a circumstance taken notice of in most of the
accounts we have of China that it seems difficult to reconcile with this
reasoning. It is said that early marriages very generally prevail through all
the ranks of the Chinese. Yet Dr Adam Smith supposes that population in
China is stationary. These two circumstances appear to be irreconcilable. It
certainly seems very little probable that the population of China is fast
increasing. Every acre of land has been so long in cultivation that we can
hardly conceive there is any great yearly addition to the average produce.
The fact, perhaps, of the universality of early marriages may not be
sufficiently ascertained. If it be supposed true, the only way of accounting
for the difficulty, with our present knowledge of the subject, appears to be
that the redundant population, necessarily occasioned by the prevalence of
early marriages, must be repressed by occasional famines, and by the
custom of exposing children, which, in times of distress, is probably more
frequent than is ever acknowledged to Europeans. Relative to this barbarous
practice, it is difficult to avoid remarking, that there cannot be a stronger
proof of the distresses that have been felt by mankind for want of food, than
the existence of a custom that thus violates the most natural principle of the
human heart. It appears to have been very general among ancient nations,
and certainly tended rather to increase population.

In examining the principal states of modern Europe, we shall find that
though they have increased very considerably in population since they were
nations of shepherds, yet that at present their progress is but slow, and
instead of doubling their numbers every twenty-five years they require three
or four hundred years, or more, for that purpose. Some, indeed, may be
absolutely stationary, and others even retrograde. The cause of this slow
progress in population cannot be traced to a decay of the passion between
the sexes. We have sufficient reason to think that this natural propensity
exists still in undiminished vigour. Why then do not its effects appear in a
rapid increase of the human species? An intimate view of the state of
society in any one country in Europe, which may serve equally for all, will
enable us to answer this question, and to say that a foresight of the

difficulties attending the rearing of a family acts as a preventive check, and
the actual distresses of some of the lower classes, by which they are
disabled from giving the proper food and attention to their children, act as a
positive check to the natural increase of population.

England, as one of the most flourishing states of Europe, may be fairly
taken for an example, and the observations made will apply with but little
variation to any other country where the population increases slowly.

The preventive check appears to operate in some degree through all the
ranks of society in England. There are some men, even in the highest rank,
who are prevented from marrying by the idea of the expenses that they must
retrench, and the fancied pleasures that they must deprive themselves of, on
the supposition of having a family. These considerations are certainly
trivial, but a preventive foresight of this kind has objects of much greater
weight for its contemplation as we go lower.

A man of liberal education, but with an income only just sufficient to
enable him to associate in the rank of gentlemen, must feel absolutely
certain that if he marries and has a family he shall be obliged, if he mixes at
all in society, to rank himself with moderate farmers and the lower class of
tradesmen. The woman that a man of education would naturally make the
object of his choice would be one brought up in the same tastes and
sentiments with himself and used to the familiar intercourse of a society
totally different from that to which she must be reduced by marriage. Can a
man consent to place the object of his affection in a situation so discordant,
probably, to her tastes and inclinations? Two or three steps of descent in
society, particularly at this round of the ladder, where education ends and
ignorance begins, will not be considered by the generality of people as a
fancied and chimerical, but a real and essential evil. If society be held
desirable, it surely must be free, equal, and reciprocal society, where
benefits are conferred as well as received, and not such as the dependent
finds with his patron or the poor with the rich.

These considerations undoubtedly prevent a great number in this rank of
life from following the bent of their inclinations in an early attachment.
Others, guided either by a stronger passion, or a weaker judgement, break
through these restraints, and it would be hard indeed, if the gratification of

so delightful a passion as virtuous love, did not, sometimes, more than
counterbalance all its attendant evils. But I fear it must be owned that the
more general consequences of such marriages are rather calculated to
justify than to repress the forebodings of the prudent.

The sons of tradesmen and farmers are exhorted not to marry, and
generally find it necessary to pursue this advice till they are settled in some
business or farm that may enable them to support a family. These events
may not, perhaps, occur till they are far advanced in life. The scarcity of
farms is a very general complaint in England. And the competition in every
kind of business is so great that it is not possible that all should be
successful.

The labourer who earns eighteen pence a day and lives with some degree
of comfort as a single man, will hesitate a little before he divides that
pittance among four or five, which seems to be but just sufficient for one.
Harder fare and harder labour he would submit to for the sake of living with
the woman that he loves, but he must feel conscious, if he thinks at all, that
should he have a large family, and any ill luck whatever, no degree of
frugality, no possible exertion of his manual strength could preserve him
from the heart-rending sensation of seeing his children starve, or of
forfeiting his independence, and being obliged to the parish for their
support. The love of independence is a sentiment that surely none would
wish to be erased from the breast of man, though the parish law of England,
it must be confessed, is a system of all others the most calculated gradually
to weaken this sentiment, and in the end may eradicate it completely.

The servants who live in gentlemen's families have restraints that are yet
stronger to break through in venturing upon marriage. They possess the
necessaries, and even the comforts of life, almost in as great plenty as their
masters. Their work is easy and their food luxurious compared with the
class of labourers. And their sense of dependence is weakened by the
conscious power of changing their masters, if they feel themselves
offended. Thus comfortably situated at present, what are their prospects in
marrying? Without knowledge or capital, either for business, or farming,
and unused and therefore unable, to earn a subsistence by daily labour, their
only refuge seems to be a miserable ale-house, which certainly offers no

very enchanting prospect of a happy evening to their lives. By much the
greater part, therefore, deterred by this uninviting view of their future
situation, content themselves with remaining single where they are.

If this sketch of the state of society in England be near the truth, and I do
not conceive that it is exaggerated, it will be allowed that the preventive
check to population in this country operates, though with varied force,
through all the classes of the community. The same observation will hold
true with regard to all old states. The effects, indeed, of these restraints
upon marriage are but too conspicuous in the consequent vices that are
produced in almost every part of the world, vices that are continually
involving both sexes in inextricable unhappiness.

CHAPTER 5
The second, or positive check to population examined, in England—The true
cause why the immense sum collected in England for the poor does not better
their condition—The powerful tendency of the poor laws to defeat their own
purpose—Palliative of the distresses of the poor proposed—The absolute
impossibility, from the fixed laws of our nature, that the pressure of want can
ever be completely removed from the lower classes of society—All the checks to
population may be resolved into misery or vice.

The positive check to population, by which I mean the check that
represses an increase which is already begun, is confined chiefly, though
not perhaps solely, to the lowest orders of society.

This check is not so obvious to common view as the other I have
mentioned, and, to prove distinctly the force and extent of its operation
would require, perhaps, more data than we are in possession of. But I
believe it has been very generally remarked by those who have attended to
bills of mortality that of the number of children who die annually, much too
great a proportion belongs to those who may be supposed unable to give
their offspring proper food and attention, exposed as they are occasionally

to severe distress and confined, perhaps, to unwholesome habitations and
hard labour. This mortality among the children of the poor has been
constantly taken notice of in all towns. It certainly does not prevail in an
equal degree in the country, but the subject has not hitherto received
sufficient attention to enable anyone to say that there are not more deaths in
proportion among the children of the poor, even in the country, than among
those of the middling and higher classes. Indeed, it seems difficult to
suppose that a labourer's wife who has six children, and who is sometimes
in absolute want of bread, should be able always to give them the food and
attention necessary to support life. The sons and daughters of peasants will
not be found such rosy cherubs in real life as they are described to be in
romances. It cannot fail to be remarked by those who live much in the
country that the sons of labourers are very apt to be stunted in their growth,
and are a long while arriving at maturity. Boys that you would guess to be
fourteen or fifteen are, upon inquiry, frequently found to be eighteen or
nineteen. And the lads who drive plough, which must certainly be a healthy
exercise, are very rarely seen with any appearance of calves to their legs: a
circumstance which can only be attributed to a want either of proper or of
sufficient nourishment.

To remedy the frequent distresses of the common people, the poor laws
of England have been instituted; but it is to be feared, that though they may
have alleviated a little the intensity of individual misfortune, they have
spread the general evil over a much larger surface. It is a subject often
started in conversation and mentioned always as a matter of great surprise
that, notwithstanding the immense sum that is annually collected for the
poor in England, there is still so much distress among them. Some think that
the money must be embezzled, others that the church-wardens and
overseers consume the greater part of it in dinners. All agree that somehow
or other it must be very ill-managed. In short the fact that nearly three
millions are collected annually for the poor and yet that their distresses are
not removed is the subject of continual astonishment. But a man who sees a
little below the surface of things would be very much more astonished if the
fact were otherwise than it is observed to be, or even if a collection
universally of eighteen shillings in the pound, instead of four, were
materially to alter it. I will state a case which I hope will elucidate my
meaning.

Suppose that by a subscription of the rich the eighteen pence a day
which men earn now was made up five shillings, it might be imagined,
perhaps, that they would then be able to live comfortably and have a piece
of meat every day for their dinners. But this would be a very false
conclusion. The transfer of three shillings and sixpence a day to every
labourer would not increase the quantity of meat in the country. There is not
at present enough for all to have a decent share. What would then be the
consequence? The competition among the buyers in the market of meat
would rapidly raise the price from sixpence or sevenpence, to two or three
shillings in the pound, and the commodity would not be divided among
many more than it is at present. When an article is scarce, and cannot be
distributed to all, he that can shew the most valid patent, that is, he that
offers most money, becomes the possessor. If we can suppose the
competition among the buyers of meat to continue long enough for a greater
number of cattle to be reared annually, this could only be done at the
expense of the corn, which would be a very disadvantagous exchange, for it
is well known that the country could not then support the same population,
and when subsistence is scarce in proportion to the number of people, it is
of little consequence whether the lowest members of the society possess
eighteen pence or five shillings. They must at all events be reduced to live
upon the hardest fare and in the smallest quantity.

It will be said, perhaps, that the increased number of purchasers in every
article would give a spur to productive industry and that the whole produce
of the island would be increased. This might in some degree be the case.
But the spur that these fancied riches would give to population would more
than counterbalance it, and the increased produce would be to be divided
among a more than proportionably increased number of people. All this
time I am supposing that the same quantity of work would be done as
before. But this would not really take place. The receipt of five shillings a
day, instead of eighteen pence, would make every man fancy himself
comparatively rich and able to indulge himself in many hours or days of
leisure. This would give a strong and immediate check to productive
industry, and, in a short time, not only the nation would be poorer, but the
lower classes themselves would be much more distressed than when they
received only eighteen pence a day.

A collection from the rich of eighteen shillings in the pound, even if
distributed in the most judicious manner, would have a little the same effect
as that resulting from the supposition I have just made, and no possible
contributions or sacrifices of the rich, particularly in money, could for any
time prevent the recurrence of distress among the lower members of society,
whoever they were. Great changes might, indeed, be made. The rich might
become poor, and some of the poor rich, but a part of the society must
necessarily feel a difficulty of living, and this difficulty will naturally fall
on the least fortunate members.

It may at first appear strange, but I believe it is true, that I cannot by
means of money raise a poor man and enable him to live much better than
he did before, without proportionably depressing others in the same class. If
I retrench the quantity of food consumed in my house, and give him what I
have cut off, I then benefit him, without depressing any but myself and
family, who, perhaps, may be well able to bear it. If I turn up a piece of
uncultivated land, and give him the produce, I then benefit both him and all
the members of the society, because what he before consumed is thrown
into the common stock, and probably some of the new produce with it. But
if I only give him money, supposing the produce of the country to remain
the same, I give him a title to a larger share of that produce than formerly,
which share he cannot receive without diminishing the shares of others. It is
evident that this effect, in individual instances, must be so small as to be
totally imperceptible; but still it must exist, as many other effects do, which,
like some of the insects that people the air, elude our grosser perceptions.

Supposing the quantity of food in any country to remain the same for
many years together, it is evident that this food must be divided according
to the value of each man's patent, or the sum of money that he can afford to
spend on this commodity so universally in request. (Mr Godwin calls the
wealth that a man receives from his ancestors a mouldy patent. It may, I
think, very properly be termed a patent, but I hardly see the propriety of
calling it a mouldy one, as it is an article in such constant use.) It is a
demonstrative truth, therefore, that the patents of one set of men could not
be increased in value without diminishing the value of the patents of some
other set of men. If the rich were to subscribe and give five shillings a day
to five hundred thousand men without retrenching their own tables, no

doubt can exist, that as these men would naturally live more at their ease
and consume a greater quantity of provisions, there would be less food
remaining to divide among the rest, and consequently each man's patent
would be diminished in value or the same number of pieces of silver would
purchase a smaller quantity of subsistence.

An increase of population without a proportional increase of food will
evidently have the same effect in lowering the value of each man's patent.
The food must necessarily be distributed in smaller quantities, and
consequently a day's labour will purchase a smaller quantity of provisions.
An increase in the price of provisions would arise either from an increase of
population faster than the means of subsistence, or from a different
distribution of the money of the society. The food of a country that has been
long occupied, if it be increasing, increases slowly and regularly and cannot
be made to answer any sudden demands, but variations in the distribution of
the money of a society are not infrequently occurring, and are undoubtedly
among the causes that occasion the continual variations which we observe
in the price of provisions.

The poor laws of England tend to depress the general condition of the
poor in these two ways. Their first obvious tendency is to increase
population without increasing the food for its support. A poor man may
marry with little or no prospect of being able to support a family in
independence. They may be said therefore in some measure to create the
poor which they maintain, and as the provisions of the country must, in
consequence of the increased population, be distributed to every man in
smaller proportions, it is evident that the labour of those who are not
supported by parish assistance will purchase a smaller quantity of
provisions than before and consequently more of them must be driven to
ask for support.

Secondly, the quantity of provisions consumed in workhouses upon a
part of the society that cannot in general be considered as the most valuable
part diminishes the shares that would otherwise belong to more industrious
and more worthy members, and thus in the same manner forces more to
become dependent. If the poor in the workhouses were to live better than
they now do, this new distribution of the money of the society would tend

more conspicuously to depress the condition of those out of the workhouses
by occasioning a rise in the price of provisions.

Fortunately for England, a spirit of independence still remains among the
peasantry. The poor laws are strongly calculated to eradicate this spirit.
They have succeeded in part, but had they succeeded as completely as
might have been expected their pernicious tendency would not have been so
long concealed.

Hard as it may appear in individual instances, dependent poverty ought
to be held disgraceful. Such a stimulus seems to be absolutely necessary to
promote the happiness of the great mass of mankind, and every general
attempt to weaken this stimulus, however benevolent its apparent intention,
will always defeat its own purpose. If men are induced to marry from a
prospect of parish provision, with little or no chance of maintaining their
families in independence, they are not only unjustly tempted to bring
unhappiness and dependence upon themselves and children, but they are
tempted, without knowing it, to injure all in the same class with themselves.
A labourer who marries without being able to support a family may in some
respects be considered as an enemy to all his fellow-labourers.

I feel no doubt whatever that the parish laws of England have
contributed to raise the price of provisions and to lower the real price of
labour. They have therefore contributed to impoverish that class of people
whose only possession is their labour. It is also difficult to suppose that they
have not powerfully contributed to generate that carelessness and want of
frugality observable among the poor, so contrary to the disposition
frequently to be remarked among petty tradesmen and small farmers. The
labouring poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from hand
to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole attention, and they
seldom think of the future. Even when they have an opportunity of saving
they seldom exercise it, but all that is beyond their present necessities goes,
generally speaking, to the ale-house. The poor laws of England may
therefore be said to diminish both the power and the will to save among the
common people, and thus to weaken one of the strongest incentives to
sobriety and industry, and consequently to happiness.

It is a general complaint among master manufacturers that high wages
ruin all their workmen, but it is difficult to conceive that these men would
not save a part of their high wages for the future support of their families,
instead of spending it in drunkenness and dissipation, if they did not rely on
parish assistance for support in case of accidents. And that the poor
employed in manufactures consider this assistance as a reason why they
may spend all the wages they earn and enjoy themselves while they can
appears to be evident from the number of families that, upon the failure of
any great manufactory, immediately fall upon the parish, when perhaps the
wages earned in this manufactory while it flourished were sufficiently
above the price of common country labour to have allowed them to save
enough for their support till they could find some other channel for their
industry.

A man who might not be deterred from going to the ale-house from the
consideration that on his death, or sickness, he should leave his wife and
family upon the parish might yet hesitate in thus dissipating his earnings if
he were assured that, in either of these cases, his family must starve or be
left to the support of casual bounty. In China, where the real as well as
nominal price of labour is very low, sons are yet obliged by law to support
their aged and helpless parents. Whether such a law would be advisable in
this country I will not pretend to determine. But it seems at any rate highly
improper, by positive institutions, which render dependent poverty so
general, to weaken that disgrace, which for the best and most humane
reasons ought to attach to it.

The mass of happiness among the common people cannot but be
diminished when one of the strongest checks to idleness and dissipation is
thus removed, and when men are thus allured to marry with little or no
prospect of being able to maintain a family in independence. Every obstacle
in the way of marriage must undoubtedly be considered as a species of
unhappiness. But as from the laws of our nature some check to population
must exist, it is better that it should be checked from a foresight of the
difficulties attending a family and the fear of dependent poverty than that it
should be encouraged, only to be repressed afterwards by want and
sickness.

It should be remembered always that there is an essential difference
between food and those wrought commodities, the raw materials of which
are in great plenty. A demand for these last will not fail to create them in as
great a quantity as they are wanted. The demand for food has by no means
the same creative power. In a country where all the fertile spots have been
seized, high offers are necessary to encourage the farmer to lay his dressing
on land from which he cannot expect a profitable return for some years.
And before the prospect of advantage is sufficiently great to encourage this
sort of agricultural enterprise, and while the new produce is rising, great
distresses may be suffered from the want of it. The demand for an increased
quantity of subsistence is, with few exceptions, constant everywhere, yet we
see how slowly it is answered in all those countries that have been long
occupied.

The poor laws of England were undoubtedly instituted for the most
benevolent purpose, but there is great reason to think that they have not
succeeded in their intention. They certainly mitigate some cases of very
severe distress which might otherwise occur, yet the state of the poor who
are supported by parishes, considered in all its circumstances, is very far
from being free from misery. But one of the principal objections to them is
that for this assistance which some of the poor receive, in itself almost a
doubtful blessing, the whole class of the common people of England is
subjected to a set of grating, inconvenient, and tyrannical laws, totally
inconsistent with the genuine spirit of the constitution. The whole business
of settlements, even in its present amended state, is utterly contradictory to
all ideas of freedom. The parish persecution of men whose families are
likely to become chargeable, and of poor women who are near lying-in, is a
most disgraceful and disgusting tyranny. And the obstructions continuity
occasioned in the market of labour by these laws have a constant tendency
to add to the difficulties of those who are struggling to support themselves
without assistance.

These evils attendant on the poor laws are in some degree irremediable.
If assistance be to be distributed to a certain class of people, a power must
be given somewhere of discriminating the proper objects and of managing
the concerns of the institutions that are necessary, but any great interference
with the affairs of other people is a species of tyranny, and in the common

course of things the exercise of this power may be expected to become
grating to those who are driven to ask for support. The tyranny of Justices,
Church-wardens, and Overseers, is a common complaint among the poor,
but the fault does not lie so much in these persons, who probably, before
they were in power, were not worse than other people, but in the nature of
all such institutions.

The evil is perhaps gone too far to be remedied, but I feel little doubt in
my own mind that if the poor laws had never existed, though there might
have been a few more instances of very severe distress, yet that the
aggregate mass of happiness among the common people would have been
much greater than it is at present.

Mr Pitt's Poor Bill has the appearance of being framed with benevolent
intentions, and the clamour raised against it was in many respects ill
directed, and unreasonable. But it must be confessed that it possesses in a
high degree the great and radical defect of all systems of the kind, that of
tending to increase population without increasing the means for its support,
and thus to depress the condition of those that are not supported by
parishes, and, consequently, to create more poor.

To remove the wants of the lower classes of society is indeed an arduous
task. The truth is that the pressure of distress on this part of a community is
an evil so deeply seated that no human ingenuity can reach it. Were I to
propose a palliative, and palliatives are all that the nature of the case will
admit, it should be, in the first place, the total abolition of all the present
parish-laws. This would at any rate give liberty and freedom of action to the
peasantry of England, which they can hardly be said to possess at present.
They would then be able to settle without interruption, wherever there was a
prospect of a greater plenty of work and a higher price for labour. The
market of labour would then be free, and those obstacles removed which, as
things are now, often for a considerable time prevent the price from rising
according to the demand.

Secondly, premiums might be given for turning up fresh land, and it
possible encouragements held out to agriculture above manufactures, and to
tillage above grazing. Every endeavour should be used to weaken and
destroy all those institutions relating to corporations, apprenticeships, etc.,

which cause the labours of agriculture to be worse paid than the labours of
trade and manufactures. For a country can never produce its proper quantity
of food while these distinctions remain in favour of artisans. Such
encouragements to agriculture would tend to furnish the market with an
increasing quantity of healthy work, and at the same time, by augmenting
the produce of the country, would raise the comparative price of labour and
ameliorate the condition of the labourer. Being now in better circumstances,
and seeing no prospect of parish assistance, he would be more able, as well
as more inclined, to enter into associations for providing against the
sickness of himself or family.

Lastly, for cases of extreme distress, county workhouses might be
established, supported by rates upon the whole kingdom, and free for
persons of all counties, and indeed of all nations. The fare should be hard,
and those that were able obliged to work. It would be desirable that they
should not be considered as comfortable asylums in all difficulties, but
merely as places where severe distress might find some alleviation. A part
of these houses might be separated, or others built for a most beneficial
purpose, which has not been infrequently taken notice of, that of providing
a place where any person, whether native or foreigner, might do a day's
work at all times and receive the market price for it. Many cases would
undoubtedly be left for the exertion of individual benevolence.

A plan of this kind, the preliminary of which should be an abolition of all
the present parish laws, seems to be the best calculated to increase the mass
of happiness among the common people of England. To prevent the
recurrence of misery, is, alas! beyond the power of man. In the vain
endeavour to attain what in the nature of things is impossible, we now
sacrifice not only possible but certain benefits. We tell the common people
that if they will submit to a code of tyrannical regulations, they shall never
be in want. They do submit to these regulations. They perform their part of
the contract, but we do not, nay cannot, perform ours, and thus the poor
sacrifice the valuable blessing of liberty and receive nothing that can be
called an equivalent in return.

Notwithstanding, then, the institution of the poor laws in England, I
think it will be allowed that considering the state of the lower classes

altogether, both in the towns and in the country, the distresses which they
suffer from the want of proper and sufficient food, from hard labour and
unwholesome habitations, must operate as a constant check to incipient
population.

To these two great checks to population, in all long occupied countries,
which I have called the preventive and the positive checks, may be added
vicious customs with respect to women, great cities, unwholesome
manufactures, luxury, pestilence, and war.

All these checks may be fairly resolved into misery and vice. And that
these are the true causes of the slow increase of population in all the states
of modern Europe, will appear sufficiently evident from the comparatively
rapid increase that has invariably taken place whenever these causes have
been in any considerable degree removed.

CHAPTER 6
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.

CHAPTER 7
A probable cause of epidemics—Extracts from Mr Suessmilch's tables—
Periodical returns of sickly seasons to be expected in certain cases—Proportion
of births to burials for short periods in any country an inadequate criterion of the
real average increase of population—Best criterion of a permanent increase of
population—Great frugality of living one of the causes of the famines of China
and Indostan—Evil tendency of one of the clauses in Mr Pitt's Poor Bill—Only
one proper way of encouraging population—Causes of the Happiness of nations
—Famine, the last and most dreadful mode by which nature represses a
redundant population—The three propositions considered as established.

By great attention to cleanliness, the plague seems at length to be
completely expelled from London. But it is not improbable that among the
secondary causes that produce even sickly seasons and epidemics ought to
be ranked a crowded population and unwholesome and insufficient food. I
have been led to this remark, by looking over some of the tables of Mr
Suessmilch, which Dr Price has extracted in one of his notes to the

postscript on the controversy respecting the population of England and
Wales. They are considered as very correct, and if such tables were general,
they would throw great light on the different ways by which population is
repressed and prevented from increasing beyond the means of subsistence
in any country. I will extract a part of the tables, with Dr Price's remarks.

IN THE KINGDOM OF PRUSSIA, AND DUKEDOM OF LITHUANIA

Proportion
Proportion
Births Burials Marriages of Births to of
Births to
Marriages
Burials
10 Yrs to 1702 21,963 14,718 5,928 37 to 10
150 to 100
5 Yrs to 1716 21,602 11,984 4,968 37 to 10
180 to 100
5 Yrs to 1756 28,392 19,154 5,599 50 to 10
148 to 100

"N.B. In 1709 and 1710, a pestilence carried off 247,733 of
the
inhabitants of this country, and in 1736 and 1737, epidemics
prevailed,
which again checked its increase."

It may be remarked, that the greatest proportion of births to burials, was
in the five years after the great pestilence.

DUCHY OF POMERANIA

Proportion
Proportion
Annual Average Births Burials Marriages of Births to of
Births to
Marriages
Burials
6 yrs to 1702 6,540 4,647 1,810 36 to 10

140 to 100
6 yrs to 1708 7,455 4,208 1,875 39 to 10
177 to 100
6 yrs to 1726 8,432 5,627 2,131 39 to 10
150 to 100
6 yrs to 1756 12,767 9,281 2,957 43 to 10
137 to 100

"In this instance the inhabitants appear to have been almost
doubled in
fifty-six years, no very bad epidemics having once
interrupted the
increase, but the three years immediately follow ing the
last period
(to 1759) were so sickly that the births were sunk to 10,229
and the
burials raised to 15,068."

Is it not probable that in this case the number of inhabitants had
increased faster than the food and the accommodations necessary to
preserve them in health? The mass of the people would, upon this
supposition, be obliged to live harder, and a greater number would be
crowded together in one house, and it is not surely improbable that these
were among the natural causes that produced the three sickly years. These
causes may produce such an effect, though the country, absolutely
considered, may not be extremely crowded and populous. In a country even
thinly inhabited, if an increase of population take place, before more food is
raised, and more houses are built, the inhabitants must be distressed in some
degree for room and subsistence. Were the marriages in England, for the
next eight or ten years, to be more prolifick than usual, or even were a
greater number of marriages than usual to take place, supposing the number
of houses to remain the same, instead of five or six to a cottage, there must
be seven or eight, and this, added to the necessity of harder living, would
probably have a very unfavourable effect on the health of the common
people.

NEUMARK OF BRANDENBURGH

Proportion
Proportion
Annual Average Births Burials Marriages of Births to of
Births to
Marriages
Burials
5 yrs to 1701 5,433 3,483 1,436 37 to 10
155 to 100
5 yrs to 1726 7,012 4,254 1,713 40 to 10
164 to 100
5 yrs to 1756 7,978 5,567 1,891 42 to 10
143 to 100

"Epidemics prevailed for six years, from 1736, to 1741,
which checked
the increase."

DUKEDOM OF MAGDEBURGH

Proportion
Proportion
Annual Average Births Burials Marriages of Births to of
Births to
Marriages
Burials
5 yrs to 1702 6,431 4,103 1,681 38 to 10
156 to 100
5 yrs to 1717 7,590 5,335 2,076 36 to 10
142 to 100
5 yrs to 1756 8,850 8,069 2,193 40 to 10
109 to 100

"The years 1738, 1740, 1750, and 1751, were particularly
sickly."

For further information on this subject, I refer the reader to Mr
Suessmilch's tables. The extracts that I have made are sufficient to shew the
periodical, though irregular, returns of sickly seasons, and it seems highly
probable that a scantiness of room and food was one of the principal causes
that occasioned them.

It appears from the tables that these countries were increasing rather fast
for old states, notwithstanding the occasional seasons that prevailed.
Cultivation must have been improving, and marriages, consequently,
encouraged. For the checks to population appear to have been rather of the
positive, than of the preventive kind. When from a prospect of increasing
plenty in any country, the weight that represses population is in some
degree removed, it is highly probable that the motion will be continued
beyond the operation of the cause that first impelled it. Or, to be more
particular, when the increasing produce of a country, and the increasing
demand for labour, so far ameliorate the condition of the labourer as greatly
to encourage marriage, it is probable that the custom of early marriages will
continue till the population of the country has gone beyond the increased
produce, and sickly seasons appear to be the natural and necessary
consequence. I should expect, therefore, that those countries where
subsistence was increasing sufficiency at times to encourage population but
not to answer all its demands, would be more subject to periodical
epidemics than those where the population could more completely
accommodate itself to the average produce.

An observation the converse of this will probably also be found true. In
those countries that are subject to periodical sicknesses, the increase of
population, or the excess of births above the burials, will be greater in the
intervals of these periods than is usual, caeteris paribus, in the countries not
so much subject to such disorders. If Turkey and Egypt have been nearly
stationary in their average population for the last century, in the intervals of
their periodical plagues, the births must have exceeded the burials in a
greater proportion than in such countries as France and England.

The average proportion of births to burials in any country for a period of
five to ten years, will hence appear to be a very inadequate criterion by
which to judge of its real progress in population. This proportion certainly
shews the rate of increase during those five or ten years; but we can by no
means thence infer what had been the increase for the twenty years before,
or what would be the increase for the twenty years after. Dr Price observes
that Sweden, Norway, Russia, and the kingdom of Naples, are increasing
fast; but the extracts from registers that he has given are not for periods of
sufficient extent to establish the fact. It is highly probable, however, that

Sweden, Norway, and Russia, are really increasing their population, though
not at the rate that the proportion of births to burials for the short periods
that Dr Price takes would seem to shew. (See Dr Price's Observations, Vol.
ii, postscript to the controversy on the population of England and Wales.)
For five years, ending in 1777, the proportion of births to burials in the
kingdom of Naples was 144 to 100, but there is reason to suppose that this
proportion would indicate an increase much greater than would be really
found to have taken place in that kingdom during a period of a hundred
years.

Dr Short compared the registers of many villages and market towns in
England for two periods; the first, from Queen Elizabeth to the middle of
the last century, and the second, from different years at the end of the last
century to the middle of the present. And from a comparison of these
extracts, it appears that in the former period the births exceeded the burials
in the proportion of 124 to 100, but in the latter, only in the proportion of
111 to 100. Dr Price thinks that the registers in the former period are not to
be depended upon, but, probably, in this instance they do not give incorrect
proportions. At least there are many reasons for expecting to find a greater
excess of births above the burials in the former period than in the latter. In
the natural progress of the population of any country, more good land will,
caeteris paribus, be taken into cultivation in the earlier stages of it than in
the later. (I say 'caeteris paribus', because the increase of the produce of any
country will always very greatly depend on the spirit of industry that
prevails, and the way in which it is directed. The knowledge and habits of
the people, and other temporary causes, particularly the degree of civil
liberty and equality existing at the time, must always have great influence in
exciting and directing this spirit.) And a greater proportional yearly increase
of produce will almost invariably be followed by a greater proportional
increase of population. But, besides this great cause, which would naturally
give the excess of births above burials greater at the end of Queen
Elizabeth's reign than in the middle of the present century, I cannot help
thinking that the occasional ravages of the plague in the former period must
have had some tendency to increase this proportion. If an average of ten
years had been taken in the intervals of the returns of this dreadful disorder,
or if the years of plague had been rejected as accidental, the registers would
certainly give the proportion of births to burials too high for the real

average increase of the population. For some few years after the great
plague in 1666, it is probable that there was a more than usual excess of
births above burials, particularly if Dr Price's opinion be founded, that
England was more populous at the revolution (which happened only
twenty-two years afterwards) than it is at present.

Mr King, in 1693, stated the proportion of the births to the burials
throughout the Kingdom, exclusive of London, as 115 to 100. Dr Short
makes it, in the middle of the present century, 111 to 100, including
London. The proportion in France for five years, ending in 1774, was 117 to
100. If these statements are near the truth; and if there are no very great
variations at particular periods in the proportions, it would appear that the
population of France and England has accommodated itself very nearly to
the average produce of each country. The discouragements to marriage, the
consequent vicious habits, war, luxury, the silent though certain
depopulation of large towns, and the close habitations, and insufficient food
of many of the poor, prevent population from increasing beyond the means
of subsistence; and, if I may use an expression which certainly at first
appears strange, supercede the necessity of great and ravaging epidemics to
repress what is redundant. Were a wasting plague to sweep off two millions
in England, and six millions in France, there can be no doubt whatever that,
after the inhabitants had recovered from the dreadful shock, the proportion
of births to burials would be much above what it is in either country at
present.

In New Jersey, the proportion of births to deaths on an average of seven
years, ending in 1743, was as 300 to 100. In France and England, taking the
highest proportion, it is as 117 to 100. Great and astonishing as this
difference is, we ought not to be so wonder-struck at it as to attribute it to
the miraculous interposition of heaven. The causes of it are not remote,
latent and mysterious; but near us, round about us, and open to the
investigation of every inquiring mind. It accords with the most liberal spirit
of philosophy to suppose that not a stone can fall, or a plant rise, without
the immediate agency of divine power. But we know from experience that
these operations of what we call nature have been conducted almost
invariably according to fixed laws. And since the world began, the causes of

population and depopulation have probably been as constant as any of the
laws of nature with which we are acquainted.

The passion between the sexes has appeared in every age to be so nearly
the same that it may always be considered, in algebraic language, as a given
quantity. The great law of necessity which prevents population from
increasing in any country beyond the food which it can either produce or
acquire, is a law so open to our view, so obvious and evident to our
understandings, and so completely confirmed by the experience of every
age, that we cannot for a moment doubt it. The different modes which
nature takes to prevent or repress a redundant population do not appear,
indeed, to us so certain and regular, but though we cannot always predict
the mode we may with certainty predict the fact. If the proportion of births
to deaths for a few years indicate an increase of numbers much beyond the
proportional increased or acquired produce of the country, we may be
perfectly certain that unless an emigration takes place, the deaths will
shortly exceed the births; and that the increase that had taken place for a
few years cannot be the real average increase of the population of the
country. Were there no other depopulating causes, every country would,
without doubt, be subject to periodical pestilences or famine.

The only true criterion of a real and permanent increase in the population
of any country is the increase of the means of subsistence. But even, this
criterion is subject to some slight variations which are, however, completely
open to our view and observations. In some countries population appears to
have been forced, that is, the people have been habituated by degrees to live
almost upon the smallest possible quantity of food. There must have been
periods in such counties when population increased permanently, without
an increase in the means of subsistence. China seems to answer to this
description. If the accounts we have of it are to be trusted, the lower classes
of people are in the habit of living almost upon the smallest possible
quantity of food and are glad to get any putrid offals that European
labourers would rather starve than eat. The law in China which permits
parents to expose their children has tended principally thus to force the
population. A nation in this state must necessarily be subject to famines.
Where a country is so populous in proportion to the means of subsistence
that the average produce of it is but barely sufficient to support the lives of

the inhabitants, any deficiency from the badness of seasons must be fatal. It
is probable that the very frugal manner in which the Gentoos are in the
habit of living contributes in some degree to the famines of Indostan.

In America, where the reward of labour is at present so liberal, the lower
classes might retrench very considerably in a year of scarcity without
materially distressing themselves. A famine therefore seems to be almost
impossible. It may be expected that in the progress of the population of
America, the labourers will in time be much less liberally rewarded. The
numbers will in this case permanently increase without a proportional
increase in the means of subsistence.

In the different states of Europe there must be some variations in the
proportion between the number of inhabitants and the quantity of food
consumed, arising from the different habits of living that prevail in each
state. The labourers of the South of England are so accustomed to eat fine
wheaten bread that they will suffer themselves to be half starved before they
will submit to live like the Scotch peasants. They might perhaps in time, by
the constant operation of the hard law of necessity, be reduced to live even
like the Lower Chinese, and the country would then, with the same quantity
of food, support a greater population. But to effect this must always be a
most difficult, and, every friend to humanity will hope, an abortive attempt.
Nothing is so common as to hear of encouragements that ought to be given
to population. If the tendency of mankind to increase be so great as I have
represented it to be, it may appear strange that this increase does not come
when it is thus repeatedly called for. The true reason is that the demand for
a greater population is made without preparing the funds necessary to
support it. Increase the demand for agricultural labour by promoting
cultivation, and with it consequently increase the produce of the country,
and ameliorate the condition of the labourer, and no apprehensions
whatever need be entertained of the proportional increase of population. An
attempt to effect this purpose in any other way is vicious, cruel, and
tyrannical, and in any state of tolerable freedom cannot therefore succeed. It
may appear to be the interest of the rulers, and the rich of a state, to force
population, and thereby lower the price of labour, and consequently the
expense of fleets and armies, and the cost of manufactures for foreign sale;
but every attempt of the kind should be carefully watched and strenuously

resisted by the friends of the poor, particularly when it comes under the
deceitful garb of benevolence, and is likely, on that account, to be
cheerfully and cordially received by the common people.

I entirely acquit Mr Pitt of any sinister intention in that clause of his
Poor Bill which allows a shilling a week to every labourer for each child he
has above three. I confess, that before the bill was brought into Parliament,
and for some time after, I thought that such a regulation would be highly
beneficial, but further reflection on the subject has convinced me that if its
object be to better the condition of the poor, it is calculated to defeat the
very purpose which it has in view. It has no tendency that I can discover to
increase the produce of the country, and if it tend to increase the population,
without increasing the produce, the necessary and inevitable consequence
appears to be that the same produce must be divided among a greater
number, and consequently that a day's labour will purchase a smaller
quantity of provisions, and the poor therefore in general must be more
distressed.

I have mentioned some cases where population may permanently
increase without a proportional increase in the means of subsistence. But it
is evident that the variation in different states, between the food and the
numbers supported by it, is restricted to a limit beyond which it cannot pass.
In every country, the population of which is not absolutely decreasing, the
food must be necessarily sufficient to support, and to continue, the race of
labourers.

Other circumstances being the same, it may be affirmed that countries
are populous according to the quantity of human food which they produce,
and happy according to the liberality with which that food is divided, or the
quantity which a day's labour will purchase. Corn countries are more
populous than pasture countries, and rice countries more populous than corn
countries. The lands in England are not suited to rice, but they would all
bear potatoes; and Dr Adam Smith observes that if potatoes were to become
the favourite vegetable food of the common people, and if the same
quantity of land was employed in their culture as is now employed in the
culture of corn, the country would be able to support a much greater
population, and would consequently in a very short time have it.

The happiness of a country does not depend, absolutely, upon its poverty
or its riches, upon its youth or its age, upon its being thinly or fully
inhabited, but upon the rapidity with which it is increasing, upon the degree
in which the yearly increase of food approaches to the yearly increase of an
unrestricted population. This approximation is always the nearest in new
colonies, where the knowledge and industry of an old state operate on the
fertile unappropriated land of a new one. In other cases, the youth or the age
of a state is not in this respect of very great importance. It is probable that
the food of Great Britain is divided in as great plenty to the inhabitants, at
the present period, as it was two thousand, three thousand, or four thousand
years ago. And there is reason to believe that the poor and thinly inhabited
tracts of the Scotch Highlands are as much distressed by an overcharged
population as the rich and populous province of Flanders.

Were a country never to be overrun by a people more advanced in arts,
but left to its own natural progress in civilization; from the time that its
produce might be considered as an unit, to the time that it might be
considered as a million, during the lapse of many hundred years, there
would not be a single period when the mass of the people could be said to
be free from distress, either directly or indirectly, for want of food. In every
state in Europe, since we have first had accounts of it, millions and millions
of human existences have been repressed from this simple cause; though
perhaps in some of these states an absolute famine has never been known.

Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource of nature. The
power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce
subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit
the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of
depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction; and
often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war
of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague, advance
in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands. Should
success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and
with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.

Must it not then be acknowledged by an attentive examiner of the
histories of mankind, that in every age and in every state in which man has

existed, or does now exist.

That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of
subsistence.

That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence
increase. And that the superior power of population it repressed, and the
actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and
vice?

CHAPTER 8
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.

CHAPTER 9
Mr Condorcet's conjecture concerning the organic perfectibility of man, and the
indefinite prolongation of human life—Fallacy of the argument, which infers an
unlimited progress from a partial improvement, the limit of which cannot be
ascertained, illustrated in the breeding of animals, and the cultivation of plants.

The last question which Mr Condorcet proposes for examination is the
organic perfectibility of man. He observes that if the proofs which have
been already given and which, in their development will receive greater
force in the work itself, are sufficient to establish the indefinite
perfectibility of man upon the supposition of the same natural faculties and
the same organization which he has at present, what will be the certainty,
what the extent of our hope, if this organization, these natural faculties
themselves, are susceptible of amelioration?

From the improvement of medicine, from the use of more wholesome
food and habitations, from a manner of living which will improve the
strength of the body by exercise without impairing it by excess, from the
destruction of the two great causes of the degradation of man, misery, and
too great riches, from the gradual removal of transmissible and contagious
disorders by the improvement of physical knowledge, rendered more
efficacious by the progress of reason and of social order, he infers that
though man will not absolutely become immortal, yet that the duration
between his birth and natural death will increase without ceasing, will have
no assignable term, and may properly be expressed by the word 'indefinite'.
He then defines this word to mean either a constant approach to an
unlimited extent, without ever reaching it, or an increase. In the immensity
of ages to an extent greater than any assignable quantity.

But surely the application of this term in either of these senses to the
duration of human life is in the highest degree unphilosophical and totally
unwarranted by any appearances in the laws of nature. Variations from
different causes are essentially distinct from a regular and unretrograde
increase. The average duration of human life will to a certain degree vary
from healthy or unhealthy climates, from wholesome or unwholesome food,
from virtuous or vicious manners, and other causes, but it may be fairly
doubted whether there is really the smallest perceptible advance in the
natural duration of human life since first we have had any authentic history
of man. The prejudices of all ages have indeed been directly contrary to this
supposition, and though I would not lay much stress upon these prejudices,

they will in some measure tend to prove that there has been no marked
advance in an opposite direction.

It may perhaps be said that the world is yet so young, so completely in
its infancy, that it ought not to be expected that any difference should
appear so soon.

If this be the case, there is at once an end of all human science. The
whole train of reasonings from effects to causes will be destroyed. We may
shut our eyes to the book of nature, as it will no longer be of any use to read
it. The wildest and most improbable conjectures may be advanced with as
much certainty as the most just and sublime theories, founded on careful
and reiterated experiments. We may return again to the old mode of
philosophising and make facts bend to systems, instead of establishing
systems upon facts. The grand and consistent theory of Newton will be
placed upon the same footing as the wild and eccentric hypotheses of
Descartes. In short, if the laws of nature are thus fickle and inconstant, if it
can be affirmed and be believed that they will change, when for ages and
ages they have appeared immutable, the human mind will no longer have
any incitements to inquiry, but must remain fixed in inactive torpor, or
amuse itself only in bewildering dreams and extravagant fancies.

The constancy of the laws of nature and of effects and causes is the
foundation of all human knowledge, though far be it from me to say that the
same power which framed and executes the laws of nature may not change
them all 'in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.' Such a change may
undoubtedly happen. All that I mean to say is that it is impossible to infer it
from reasoning. If without any previous observable symptoms or
indications of a change, we can infer that a change will take place, we may
as well make any assertion whatever and think it as unreasonable to be
contradicted in affirming that the moon will come in contact with the earth
tomorrow, as in saying that the sun will rise at its usual time.

With regard to the duration of human life, there does not appear to have
existed from the earliest ages of the world to the present moment the
smallest permanent symptom or indication of increasing prolongation. The
observable effects of climate, habit, diet, and other causes, on length of life
have furnished the pretext for asserting its indefinite extension; and the

sandy foundation on which the argument rests is that because the limit of
human life is undefined; because you cannot mark its precise term, and say
so far exactly shall it go and no further; that therefore its extent may
increase for ever, and be properly termed indefinite or unlimited. But the
fallacy and absurdity of this argument will sufficiently appear from a slight
examination of what Mr Condorcet calls the organic perfectibility, or
degeneration, of the race of plants and animals, which he says may be
regarded as one of the general laws of nature.

I am told that it is a maxim among the improvers of cattle that you may
breed to any degree of nicety you please, and they found this maxim upon
another, which is that some of the offspring will possess the desirable
qualities of the parents in a greater degree. In the famous Leicestershire
breed of sheep, the object is to procure them with small heads and small
legs. Proceeding upon these breeding maxims, it is evident that we might go
on till the heads and legs were evanescent quantities, but this is so palpable
an absurdity that we may be quite sure that the premises are not just and
that there really is a limit, though we cannot see it or say exactly where it is.
In this case, the point of the greatest degree of improvement, or the smallest
size of the head and legs, may be said to be undefined, but this is very
different from unlimited, or from indefinite, in Mr Condorcet's acceptation
of the term. Though I may not be able in the present instance to mark the
limit at which further improvement will stop, I can very easily mention a
point at which it will not arrive. I should not scruple to assert that were the
breeding to continue for ever, the head and legs of these sheep would never
be so small as the head and legs of a rat.

It cannot be true, therefore, that among animals, some of the offspring
will possess the desirable qualities of the parents in a greater degree, or that
animals are indefinitely perfectible.

The progress of a wild plant to a beautiful garden flower is perhaps more
marked and striking than anything that takes place among animals, yet even
here it would be the height of absurdity to assert that the progress was
unlimited or indefinite.

One of the most obvious features of the improvement is the increase of
size. The flower has grown gradually larger by cultivation. If the progress

were really unlimited it might be increased ad infinitum, but this is so gross
an absurdity that we may be quite sure that among plants as well as among
animals there is a limit to improvement, though we do not exactly know
where it is. It is probable that the gardeners who contend for flower prizes
have often applied stronger dressing without success. At the same time it
would be highly presumptuous in any man to say that he had seen the finest
carnation or anemone that could ever be made to grow. He might however
assert without the smallest chance of being contradicted by a future fact,
that no carnation or anemone could ever by cultivation be increased to the
size of a large cabbage; and yet there are assignable quantities much greater
than a cabbage. No man can say that he has seen the largest ear of wheat, or
the largest oak that could ever grow; but he might easily, and with perfect
certainty, name a point of magnitude at which they would not arrive. In all
these cases therefore, a careful distinction should be made, between an
unlimited progress, and a progress where the limit is merely undefined.

It will be said, perhaps, that the reason why plants and animals cannot
increase indefinitely in size is, that they would fall by their own weight. I
answer, how do we know this but from experience?—from experience of
the degree of strength with which these bodies are formed. I know that a
carnation, long before it reached the size of a cabbage, would not be
supported by its stalk, but I only know this from my experience of the
weakness and want of tenacity in the materials of a carnation stalk. There
are many substances in nature of the same size that would support as large a
head as a cabbage.

The reasons of the mortality of plants are at present perfectly unknown
to us. No man can say why such a plant is annual, another biennial, and
another endures for ages. The whole affair in all these cases, in plants,
animals, and in the human race, is an affair of experience, and I only
conclude that man is mortal because the invariable experience of all ages
has proved the mortality of those materials of which his visible body is
made:

What can we reason, but from what we know?

Sound philosophy will not authorize me to alter this opinion of the
mortality of man on earth, till it can be clearly proved that the human race

has made, and is making, a decided progress towards an illimitable extent
of life. And the chief reason why I adduced the two particular instances
from animals and plants was to expose and illustrate, if I could, the fallacy
of that argument which infers an unlimited progress, merely because some
partial improvement has taken place, and that the limit of this improvement
cannot be precisely ascertained.

The capacity of improvement in plants and animals, to a certain degree,
no person can possibly doubt. A clear and decided progress has already
been made, and yet, I think, it appears that it would be highly absurd to say
that this progress has no limits. In human life, though there are great
variations from different causes, it may be doubted whether, since the world
began, any organic improvement whatever in the human frame can be
clearly ascertained. The foundations, therefore, on which the arguments for
the organic perfectibility of man rest, are unusually weak, and can only be
considered as mere conjectures. It does not, however, by any means seem
impossible that by an attention to breed, a certain degree of improvement,
similar to that among animals, might take place among men. Whether
intellect could be communicated may be a matter of doubt: but size,
strength, beauty, complexion, and perhaps even longevity are in a degree
transmissible. The error does not seem to lie in supposing a small degree of
improvement possible, but in not discriminating between a small
improvement, the limit of which is undefined, and an improvement really
unlimited. As the human race, however, could not be improved in this way,
without condemning all the bad specimens to celibacy, it is not probable
that an attention to breed should ever become general; indeed, I know of no
well-directed attempts of this kind, except in the ancient family of the
Bickerstaffs, who are said to have been very successful in whitening the
skins and increasing the height of their race by prudent marriages,
particularly by that very judicious cross with Maud, the milk-maid, by
which some capital defects in the constitutions of the family were corrected.

It will not be necessary, I think, in order more completely to shew the
improbability of any approach in man towards immortality on earth, to urge
the very great additional weight that an increase in the duration of life
would give to the argument of population.

Many, I doubt not, will think that the attempting gravely to controvert so
absurd a paradox as the immortality of man on earth, or indeed, even the
perfectibility of man and society, is a waste of time and words, and that
such unfounded conjectures are best answered by neglect. I profess,
however, to be of a different opinion. When paradoxes of this kind are
advanced by ingenious and able men, neglect has no tendency to convince
them of their mistakes. Priding themselves on what they conceive to be a
mark of the reach and size of their own understandings, of the extent and
comprehensiveness of their views, they will look upon this neglect merely
as an indication of poverty, and narrowness, in the mental exertions of their
contemporaries, and only think that the world is not yet prepared to receive
their sublime truths.

On the contrary, a candid investigation of these subjects, accompanied
with a perfect readiness to adopt any theory warranted by sound philosophy,
may have a tendency to convince them that in forming improbable and
unfounded hypotheses, so far from enlarging the bounds of human science,
they are contracting it, so far from promoting the improvement of the
human mind, they are obstructing it; they are throwing us back again almost
into the infancy of knowledge and weakening the foundations of that mode
of philosophising, under the auspices of which science has of late made
such rapid advances. The present rage for wide and unrestrained speculation
seems to be a kind of mental intoxication, arising, perhaps, from the great
and unexpected discoveries which have been made of late years, in various
branches of science. To men elate and giddy with such successes, every
thing appeared to be within the grasp of human powers; and, under this
illusion, they confounded subjects where no real progress could be proved
with those where the progress had been marked, certain, and acknowledged.
Could they be persuaded to sober themselves with a little severe and
chastised thinking, they would see, that the cause of truth, and of sound
philosophy, cannot but suffer by substituting wild flights and unsupported
assertions for patient investigation, and well authenticated proofs.

Mr Condorcet's book may be considered not only as a sketch of the
opinions of a celebrated individual, but of many of the literary men in
France at the beginning of the Revolution. As such, though merely a sketch,
it seems worthy of attention.

CHAPTER 10
Mr Godwin's system of equality—Error of attributing all the vices of mankind to
human institutions—Mr Godwin's first answer to the difficulty arising from
population totally insufficient—Mr Godwin's beautiful system of equality
supposed to be realized—Its utter destruction simply from the principle of
population in so short a time as thirty years.

In reading Mr Godwin's ingenious and able work on political justice, it is
impossible not to be struck with the spirit and energy of his style, the force
and precision of some of his reasonings, the ardent tone of his thoughts, and
particularly with that impressive earnestness of manner which gives an air
of truth to the whole. At the same time, it must be confessed that he has not
proceeded in his inquiries with the caution that sound philosophy seems to
require. His conclusions are often unwarranted by his premises. He fails
sometimes in removing the objections which he himself brings forward. He
relies too much on general and abstract propositions which will not admit of
application. And his conjectures certainly far outstrip the modesty of nature.

The system of equality which Mr Godwin proposes is, without doubt, by
far the most beautiful and engaging of any that has yet appeared. An
amelioration of society to be produced merely by reason and conviction
wears much more the promise of permanence than any change effected and
maintained by force. The unlimited exercise of private judgement is a
doctrine inexpressibly grand and captivating and has a vast superiority over
those systems where every individual is in a manner the slave of the public.
The substitution of benevolence as the master-spring and moving principle
of society, instead of self-love, is a consummation devoutly to be wished. In
short, it is impossible to contemplate the whole of this fair structure without
emotions of delight and admiration, accompanied with ardent longing for
the period of its accomplishment. But, alas! that moment can never arrive.
The whole is little better than a dream, a beautiful phantom of the
imagination. These 'gorgeous palaces' of happiness and immortality, these

'solemn temples' of truth and virtue will dissolve, 'like the baseless fabric of
a vision', when we awaken to real life and contemplate the true and genuine
situation of man on earth. Mr Godwin, at the conclusion of the third chapter
of his eighth book, speaking of population, says:

There is a principle in human society, by which population is perpetually
kept down to the level of the means of subsistence. Thus among the
wandering tribes of America and Asia, we never find through the lapse of
ages that population has so increased as to render necessary the cultivation
of the earth.

This principle, which Mr Godwin thus mentions as some mysterious and
occult cause and which he does not attempt to investigate, will be found to
be the grinding law of necessity, misery, and the fear of misery.

The great error under which Mr Godwin labours throughout his whole
work is the attributing almost all the vices and misery that are seen in civil
society to human institutions. Political regulations and the established
administration of property are with him the fruitful sources of all evil, the
hotbeds of all the crimes that degrade mankind. Were this really a true state
of the case, it would not seem a hopeless task to remove evil completely
from the world, and reason seems to be the proper and adequate instrument
for effecting so great a purpose. But the truth is, that though human
institutions appear to be the obvious and obtrusive causes of much mischief
to mankind, yet in reality they are light and superficial, they are mere
feathers that float on the surface, in comparison with those deeper seated
causes of impurity that corrupt the springs and render turbid the whole
stream of human life.

Mr Godwin, in his chapter on the benefits attendant on a system of
equality, says:

The spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility, and the spirit of fraud,
these are the immediate growth of the established administration of
property. They are alike hostile to intellectual improvement. The other vices
of envy, malice, and revenge are their inseparable companions. In a state of
society where men lived in the midst of plenty and where all shared alike
the bounties of nature, these sentiments would inevitably expire. The

narrow principle of selfishness would vanish. No man being obliged to
guard his little store or provide with anxiety and pain for his restless wants,
each would lose his individual existence in the thought of the general good.
No man would be an enemy to his neighbour, for they would have no
subject of contention, and, of consequence, philanthropy would resume the
empire which reason assigns her. Mind would be delivered from her
perpetual anxiety about corporal support, and free to expatiate in the field of
thought, which is congenial to her. Each would assist the inquiries of all.

This would, indeed, be a happy state. But that it is merely an imaginary
picture, with scarcely a feature near the truth, the reader, I am afraid, is
already too well convinced.

Man cannot live in the midst of plenty. All cannot share alike the
bounties of nature. Were there no established administration of property,
every man would be obliged to guard with force his little store. Selfishness
would be triumphant. The subjects of contention would be perpetual. Every
individual mind would be under a constant anxiety about corporal support,
and not a single intellect would be left free to expatiate in the field of
thought.

How little Mr Godwin has turned the attention of his penetrating mind to
the real state of man on earth will sufficiently appear from the manner in
which he endeavours to remove the difficulty of an overcharged population.
He says:

The obvious answer to this objection, is, that to reason thus is to foresee
difficulties at a great distance. Three fourths of the habitable globe is now
uncultivated. The parts already cultivated are capable of immeasurable
improvement. Myriads of centuries of still increasing population may pass
away, and the earth be still found sufficient for the subsistence of its
inhabitants.

I have already pointed out the error of supposing that no distress and
difficulty would arise from an overcharged population before the earth
absolutely refused to produce any more. But let us imagine for a moment
Mr Godwin's beautiful system of equality realized in its utmost purity, and
see how soon this difficulty might be expected to press under so perfect a

form of society. A theory that will not admit of application cannot possibly
be just.

Let us suppose all the causes of misery and vice in this island removed.
War and contention cease. Unwholesome trades and manufactories do not
exist. Crowds no longer collect together in great and pestilent cities for
purposes of court intrigue, of commerce, and vicious gratifications. Simple,
healthy, and rational amusements take place of drinking, gaming, and
debauchery. There are no towns sufficiently large to have any prejudicial
effects on the human constitution. The greater part of the happy inhabitants
of this terrestrial paradise live in hamlets and farmhouses scattered over the
face of the country. Every house is clean, airy, sufficiently roomy, and in a
healthy situation. All men are equal. The labours of luxury are at end. And
the necessary labours of agriculture are shared amicably among all. The
number of persons, and the produce of the island, we suppose to be the
same as at present. The spirit of benevolence, guided by impartial justice,
will divide this produce among all the members of the society according to
their wants. Though it would be impossible that they should all have animal
food every day, yet vegetable food, with meat occasionally, would satisfy
the desires of a frugal people and would be sufficient to preserve them in
health, strength, and spirits.

Mr Godwin considers marriage as a fraud and a monopoly. Let us
suppose the commerce of the sexes established upon principles of the most
perfect freedom. Mr Godwin does not think himself that this freedom would
lead to a promiscuous intercourse, and in this I perfectly agree with him.
The love of variety is a vicious, corrupt, and unnatural taste and could not
prevail in any great degree in a simple and virtuous state of society. Each
man would probably select himself a partner, to whom he would adhere as
long as that adherence continued to be the choice of both parties. It would
be of little consequence, according to Mr Godwin, how many children a
woman had or to whom they belonged. Provisions and assistance would
spontaneously flow from the quarter in which they abounded, to the quarter
that was deficient. (See Bk VIII, ch. 8; in the third edition, Vol II, p. 512)
And every man would be ready to furnish instruction to the rising
generation according to his capacity.

I cannot conceive a form of society so favourable upon the whole to
population. The irremediableness of marriage, as it is at present constituted,
undoubtedly deters many from entering into that state. An unshackled
intercourse on the contrary would be a most powerful incitement to early
attachments, and as we are supposing no anxiety about the future support of
children to exist, I do not conceive that there would be one woman in a
hundred, of twenty-three, without a family.

With these extraordinary encouragements to population, and every cause
of depopulation, as we have supposed, removed, the numbers would
necessarily increase faster than in any society that has ever yet been known.
I have mentioned, on the authority of a pamphlet published by a Dr Styles
and referred to by Dr Price, that the inhabitants of the back settlements of
America doubled their numbers in fifteen years. England is certainly a more
healthy country than the back settlements of America, and as we have
supposed every house in the island to be airy and wholesome, and the
encouragements to have a family greater even than with the back settlers,
no probable reason can be assigned why the population should not double
itself in less, if possible, than fifteen years. But to be quite sure that we do
not go beyond the truth, we will only suppose the period of doubling to be
twenty-five years, a ratio of increase which is well known to have taken
place throughout all the Northern States of America.

There can be little doubt that the equalization of property which we have
supposed, added to the circumstance of the labour of the whole community
being directed chiefly to agriculture, would tend greatly to augment the
produce of the country. But to answer the demands of a population
increasing so rapidly, Mr Godwin's calculation of half an hour a day for
each man would certainly not be sufficient. It is probable that the half of
every man's time must be employed for this purpose. Yet with such, or
much greater exertions, a person who is acquainted with the nature of the
soil in this country, and who reflects on the fertility of the lands already in
cultivation, and the barrenness of those that are not cultivated, will be very
much disposed to doubt whether the whole average produce could possibly
be doubled in twenty-five years from the present period. The only chance of
success would be the ploughing up all the grazing countries and putting an
end almost entirely to the use of animal food. Yet a part of this scheme

might defeat itself. The soil of England will not produce much without
dressing, and cattle seem to be necessary to make that species of manure
which best suits the land. In China it is said that the soil in some of the
provinces is so fertile as to produce two crops of rice in the year without
dressing. None of the lands in England will answer to this description.

Difficult, however, as it might be to double the average produce of the
island in twenty-five years, let us suppose it effected. At the expiration of
the first period therefore, the food, though almost entirely vegetable, would
be sufficient to support in health the doubled population of fourteen
millions.

During the next period of doubling, where will the food be found to
satisfy the importunate demands of the increasing numbers? Where is the
fresh land to turn up? Where is the dressing necessary to improve that
which is already in cultivation? There is no person with the smallest
knowledge of land but would say that it was impossible that the average
produce of the country could be increased during the second twenty-five
years by a quantity equal to what it at present yields. Yet we will suppose
this increase, however improbable, to take place. The exuberant strength of
the argument allows of almost any concession. Even with this concession,
however, there would be seven millions at the expiration of the second term
unprovided for. A quantity of food equal to the frugal support of twenty-one
millions, would be to be divided among twenty-eight millions.

Alas! what becomes of the picture where men lived in the midst of
plenty, where no man was obliged to provide with anxiety and pain for his
restless wants, where the narrow principle of selfishness did not exist,
where Mind was delivered from her perpetual anxiety about corporal
support and free to expatiate in the field of thought which is congenial to
her. This beautiful fabric of imagination vanishes at the severe touch of
truth. The spirit of benevolence, cherished and invigorated by plenty, is
repressed by the chilling breath of want. The hateful passions that had
vanished reappear. The mighty law of self-preservation expels all the softer
and more exalted emotions of the soul. The temptations to evil are too
strong for human nature to resist. The corn is plucked before it is ripe, or
secreted in unfair proportions, and the whole black train of vices that belong

to falsehood are immediately generated. Provisions no longer flow in for
the support of the mother with a large family. The children are sickly from
insufficient food. The rosy flush of health gives place to the pallid cheek
and hollow eye of misery. Benevolence, yet lingering in a few bosoms,
makes some faint expiring struggles, till at length self-love resumes his
wonted empire and lords it triumphant over the world.

No human institutions here existed, to the perverseness of which Mr
Godwin ascribes the original sin of the worst men. (Bk VIII, ch. 3; in the
third edition, Vol. II, p. 462) No opposition had been produced by them
between public and private good. No monopoly had been created of those
advantages which reason directs to be left in common. No man had been
goaded to the breach of order by unjust laws. Benevolence had established
her reign in all hearts: and yet in so short a period as within fifty years,
violence, oppression, falsehood, misery, every hateful vice, and every form
of distress, which degrade and sadden the present state of society, seem to
have been generated by the most imperious circumstances, by laws inherent
in the nature of man, and absolutely independent of it human regulations.

If we are not yet too well convinced of the reality of this melancholy
picture, let us but look for a moment into the next period of twenty-five
years; and we shall see twenty-eight millions of human beings without the
means of support; and before the conclusion of the first century, the
population would be one hundred and twelve millions, and the food only
sufficient for thirty-five millions, leaving seventy-seven millions
unprovided for. In these ages want would be indeed triumphant, and rapine
and murder must reign at large: and yet all this time we are supposing the
produce of the earth absolutely unlimited, and the yearly increase greater
than the boldest speculator can imagine.

This is undoubtedly a very different view of the difficulty arising from
population from that which Mr Godwin gives, when he says, 'Myriads of
centuries of still increasing population may pass away, and the earth be still
found sufficient for the subsistence of its inhabitants.'

I am sufficiently aware that the redundant twenty-eight millions, or
seventy-seven millions, that I have mentioned, could never have existed. It
is a perfectly just observation of Mr Godwin, that, 'There is a principle in

human society, by which population is perpetually kept down to the level of
the means of subsistence.' The sole question is, what is this principle? is it
some obscure and occult cause? Is it some mysterious interference of
heaven which, at a certain period, strikes the men with impotence, and the
women with barrenness? Or is it a cause, open to our researches, within our
view, a cause, which has constantly been observed to operate, though with
varied force, in every state in which man has been placed? Is it not a degree
of misery, the necessary and inevitable result of the laws of nature, which
human institutions, so far from aggravating, have tended considerably to
mitigate, though they never can remove?

It may be curious to observe, in the case that we have been supposing,
how some of the laws which at present govern civilized society, would be
successively dictated by the most imperious necessity. As man, according to
Mr Godwin, is the creature of the impressions to which he is subject, the
goadings of want could not continue long, before some violations of public
or private stock would necessarily take place. As these violations increased
in number and extent, the more active and comprehensive intellects of the
society would soon perceive, that while population was fast increasing, the
yearly produce of the country would shortly begin to diminish. The urgency
of the case would suggest the necessity of some mediate measures to be
taken for the general safety. Some kind of convention would then be called,
and the dangerous situation of the country stated in the strongest terms. It
would be observed, that while they lived in the midst of plenty, it was of
little consequence who laboured the least, or who possessed the least, as
every man was perfectly willing and ready to supply the wants of his
neighbour. But that the question was no longer whether one man should
give to another that which he did not use himself, but whether he should
give to his neighbour the food which was absolutely necessary to his own
existence. It would be represented, that the number of those that were in
want very greatly exceeded the number and means of those who should
supply them; that these pressing wants, which from the state of the produce
of the country could not all be gratified, had occasioned some flagrant
violations of justice; that these violations had already checked the increase
of food, and would, if they were not by some means or other prevented,
throw the whole community in confusion; that imperious necessity seemed
to dictate that a yearly increase of produce should, if possible, be obtained

at all events; that in order to effect this first, great, and indispensable
purpose, it would be advisable to make a more complete division of land,
and to secure every man's stock against violation by the most powerful
sanctions, even by death itself.

It might be urged perhaps by some objectors that, as the fertility of the
land increased, and various accidents occurred, the share of some men
might be much more than sufficient for their support, and that when the
reign of self-love was once established, they would not distribute their
surplus produce without some compensation in return. It would be
observed, in answer, that this was an inconvenience greatly to be lamented;
but that it was an evil which bore no comparison to the black train of
distresses that would inevitably be occasioned by the insecurity of property;
that the quantity of food which one man could consume was necessarily
limited by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; that it was not
certainly probable that he should throw away the rest; but that even if he
exchanged his surplus food for the labour of others, and made them in some
degree dependent on him, this would still be better than that these others
should absolutely starve.

It seems highly probable, therefore, that an administration of property,
not very different from that which prevails in civilized states at present,
would be established, as the best, though inadequate, remedy for the evils
which were pressing on the society.

The next subject that would come under discussion, intimately
connected with the preceding, is the commerce between the sexes. It would
be urged by those who had turned their attention to the true cause of the
difficulties under which the community laboured, that while every man felt
secure that all his children would be well provided for by general
benevolence, the powers of the earth would be absolutely inadequate to
produce food for the population which would inevitably ensue; that even if
the whole attention and labour of the society were directed to this sole
point, and if, by the most perfect security of property, and every other
encouragement that could be thought of, the greatest possible increase of
produce were yearly obtained; yet still, that the increase of food would by
no means keep pace with the much more rapid increase of population; that

some check to population therefore was imperiously called for; that the
most natural and obvious check seemed to be to make every man provide
for his own children; that this would operate in some respect as a measure
and guide in the increase of population, as it might be expected that no man
would bring beings into the world, for whom he could not find the means of
support; that where this notwithstanding was the case, it seemed necessary,
for the example of others, that the disgrace and inconvenience attending
such a conduct should fall upon the individual, who had thus
inconsiderately plunged himself and innocent children in misery and want.

The institution of marriage, or at least, of some express or implied
obligation on every man to support his own children, seems to be the
natural result of these reasonings in a community under the difficulties that
we have supposed.

The view of these difficulties presents us with a very natural origin of
the superior disgrace which attends a breach of chastity in the woman than
in the man. It could not be expected that women should have resources
sufficient to support their own children. When therefore a woman was
connected with a man, who had entered into no compact to maintain her
children, and, aware of the inconveniences that he might bring upon
himself, had deserted her, these children must necessarily fall for support
upon the society, or starve. And to prevent the frequent recurrence of such
an inconvenience, as it would be highly unjust to punish so natural a fault
by personal restraint or infliction, the men might agree to punish it with
disgrace. The offence is besides more obvious and conspicuous in the
woman, and less liable to any mistake. The father of a child may not always
be known, but the same uncertainty cannot easily exist with regard to the
mother. Where the evidence of the offence was most complete, and the
inconvenience to the society at the same time the greatest, there it was
agreed that the large share of blame should fall. The obligation on every
man to maintain his children, the society would enforce, if there were
occasion; and the greater degree of inconvenience or labour, to which a
family would necessarily subject him, added to some portion of disgrace
which every human being must incur who leads another into unhappiness,
might be considered as a sufficient punishment for the man.

That a woman should at present be almost driven from society for an
offence which men commit nearly with impunity, seems to be undoubtedly
a breach of natural justice. But the origin of the custom, as the most obvious
and effectual method of preventing the frequent recurrence of a serious
inconvenience to a community, appears to be natural, though not perhaps
perfectly justifiable. This origin, however, is now lost in the new train of
ideas which the custom has since generated. What at first might be dictated
by state necessity is now supported by female delicacy, and operates with
the greatest force on that part of society where, if the original intention of
the custom were preserved, there is the least real occasion for it.

When these two fundamental laws of society, the security of property,
and the institution of marriage, were once established, inequality of
conditions must necessarily follow. Those who were born after the division
of property would come into a world already possessed. If their parents,
from having too large a family, could not give them sufficient for their
support, what are they to do in a world where everything is appropriated?
We have seen the fatal effects that would result to a society, if every man
had a valid claim to an equal share of the produce of the earth. The
members of a family which was grown too large for the original division of
land appropriated to it could not then demand a part of the surplus produce
of others, as a debt of justice. It has appeared, that from the inevitable laws
of our nature some human beings must suffer from want. These are the
unhappy persons who, in the great lottery of life, have drawn a blank. The
number of these claimants would soon exceed the ability of the surplus
produce to supply. Moral merit is a very difficult distinguishing criterion,
except in extreme cases. The owners of surplus produce would in general
seek some more obvious mark of distinction. And it seems both natural and
just that, except upon particular occasions, their choice should fall upon
those who were able, and professed themselves willing, to exert their
strength in procuring a further surplus produce; and thus at once benefiting
the community, and enabling these proprietors to afford assistance to
greater numbers. All who were in want of food would be urged by
imperious necessity to offer their labour in exchange for this article so
absolutely essential to existence. The fund appropriated to the maintenance
of labour would be the aggregate quantity of food possessed by the owners
of land beyond their own consumption. When the demands upon this fund

were great and numerous, it would naturally be divided in very small
shares. Labour would be ill paid. Men would offer to work for a bare
subsistence, and the rearing of families would be checked by sickness and
misery. On the contrary, when this fund was increasing fast, when it was
great in proportion to the number of claimants, it would be divided in much
larger shares. No man would exchange his labour without receiving an
ample quantity of food in return. Labourers would live in ease and comfort,
and would consequently be able to rear a numerous and vigorous offspring.

On the state of this fund, the happiness, or the degree of misery,
prevailing among the lower classes of people in every known state at
present chiefly depends. And on this happiness, or degree of misery,
depends the increase, stationariness, or decrease of population.

And thus it appears, that a society constituted according to the most
beautiful form that imagination can conceive, with benevolence for its
moving principle, instead of self-love, and with every evil disposition in all
its members corrected by reason and not force, would, from the inevitable
laws of nature, and not from any original depravity of man, in a very short
period degenerate into a society constructed upon a plan not essentially
different from that which prevails in every known state at present; I mean, a
society divided into a class of proprietors, and a class of labourers, and with
self-love the main-spring of the great machine.

In the supposition I have made, I have undoubtedly taken the increase of
population smaller, and the increase of produce greater, than they really
would be. No reason can be assigned why, under the circumstances I have
supposed, population should not increase faster than in any known instance.
If then we were to take the period of doubling at fifteen years, instead of
twenty-five years, and reflect upon the labour necessary to double the
produce in so short a time, even if we allow it possible, we may venture to
pronounce with certainty that if Mr Godwin's system of society was
established in its utmost perfection, instead of myriads of centuries, not
thirty years could elapse before its utter destruction from the simple
principle of population.

I have taken no notice of emigration for obvious reasons. If such
societies were instituted in other parts of Europe, these countries would be

under the same difficulties with regard to population, and could admit no
fresh members into their bosoms. If this beautiful society were confined to
this island, it must have degenerated strangely from its original purity, and
administer but a very small portion of the happiness it proposed; in short, its
essential principle must be completely destroyed, before any of its members
would voluntarily consent to leave it, and live under such governments as at
present exist in Europe, or submit to the extreme hardships of first settlers
in new regions. We well know, from repeated experience, how much misery
and hardship men will undergo in their own country, before they can
determine to desert it; and how often the most tempting proposals of
embarking for new settlements have been rejected by people who appeared
to be almost starving.

CHAPTER 11
Mr Godwin's conjecture concerning the future extinction of the passion between
the sexes—Little apparent grounds for such a conjecture—Passion of love not
inconsistent either with reason or virtue.

We have supported Mr Godwin's system of society once completely
established. But it is supposing an impossibility. The same causes in nature
which would destroy it so rapidly, were it once established, would prevent
the possibility of its establishment. And upon what grounds we can presume
a change in these natural causes, I am utterly at a loss to conjecture. No
move towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes has taken
place in the five or six thousand years that the world has existed. Men in the
decline of life have in all ages declaimed against a passion which they have
ceased to feel, but with as little reason as success. Those who from coldness
of constitutional temperament have never felt what love is, will surely be
allowed to be very incompetent judges with regard to the power of this
passion to contribute to the sum of pleasurable sensations in life. Those who
have spent their youth in criminal excesses and have prepared for

themselves, as the comforts of their age, corporeal debility and mental
remorse may well inveigh against such pleasures as vain and futile, and
unproductive of lasting satisfaction. But the pleasures of pure love will bear
the contemplation of the most improved reason, and the most exalted virtue.
Perhaps there is scarcely a man who has once experienced the genuine
delight of virtuous love, however great his intellectual pleasure may have
been, that does not look back to the period as the sunny spot in his whole
life, where his imagination loves to bask, which he recollects and
contemplates with the fondest regrets, and which he would most wish to
live over again. The superiority of intellectual to sensual pleasures consists
rather in their filling up more time, in their having a larger range, and in
their being less liable to satiety, than in their being more real and essential.

Intemperance in every enjoyment defeats its own purpose. A walk in the
finest day through the most beautiful country, if pursued too far, ends in
pain and fatigue. The most wholesome and invigorating food, eaten with an
unrestrained appetite, produces weakness instead of strength. Even
intellectual pleasures, though certainly less liable than others to satiety,
pursued with too little intermission, debilitate the body, and impair the
vigour of the mind. To argue against the reality of these pleasures from their
abuse seems to be hardly just. Morality, according to Mr Godwin, is a
calculation of consequences, or, as Archdeacon Paley very justly expresses
it, the will of God, as collected from general expediency. According to
either of these definitions, a sensual pleasure not attended with the
probability of unhappy consequences does not offend against the laws of
morality, and if it be pursued with such a degree of temperance as to leave
the most ample room for intellectual attainments, it must undoubtedly add
to the sum of pleasurable sensations in life. Virtuous love, exalted by
friendship, seems to be that sort of mixture of sensual and intellectual
enjoyment particularly suited to the nature of man, and most powerfully
calculated to awaken the sympathies of the soul, and produce the most
exquisite gratifications.

Mr Godwin says, in order to shew the evident inferiority of the pleasures
of sense, 'Strip the commerce of the sexes of all its attendant circumstances,
and it would be generally despised' (Bk. I, ch. 5; in the third edition, Vol. I,
pp. 71-72). He might as well say to a man who admired trees: strip them of

their spreading branches and lovely foliage, and what beauty can you see in
a bare pole? But it was the tree with the branches and foliage, and not
without them, that excited admiration. One feature of an object may be as
distinct, and excite as different emotions, from the aggregate as any two
things the most remote, as a beautiful woman, and a map of Madagascar. It
is 'the symmetry of person, the vivacity, the voluptuous softness of temper,
the affectionate kindness of feelings, the imagination and the wit' of a
woman that excite the passion of love, and not the mere distinction of her
being female. Urged by the passion of love, men have been driven into acts
highly prejudicial to the general interests of society, but probably they
would have found no difficulty in resisting the temptation, had it appeared
in the form of a woman with no other attractions whatever but her sex. To
strip sensual pleasures of all their adjuncts, in order to prove their
inferiority, is to deprive a magnet of some of its most essential causes of
attraction, and then to say that it is weak and inefficient.

In the pursuit of every enjoyment, whether sensual or intellectual,
reason, that faculty which enables us to calculate consequences, is the
proper corrective and guide. It is probable therefore that improved reason
will always tend to prevent the abuse of sensual pleasures, though it by no
means follows that it will extinguish them.

I have endeavoured to expose the fallacy of that argument which infers
an unlimited progress from a partial improvement, the limits of which
cannot be exactly ascertained. It has appeared, I think, that there are many
instances in which a decided progress has been observed, where yet it
would be a gross absurdity to suppose that progress indefinite. But towards
the extinction of the passion between the sexes, no observable progress
whatever has hitherto been made. To suppose such an extinction, therefore,
is merely to offer an unfounded conjecture, unsupported by any
philosophical probabilities.

It is a truth, which history I am afraid makes too clear, that some men of
the highest mental powers have been addicted not only to a moderate, but
even to an immoderate indulgence in the pleasures of sensual love. But
allowing, as I should be inclined to do, notwithstanding numerous instances
to the contrary, that great intellectual exertions tend to diminish the empire

of this passion over man, it is evident that the mass of mankind must be
improved more highly than the brightest ornaments of the species at present
before any difference can take place sufficient sensibly to affect population.
I would by no means suppose that the mass of mankind has reached its term
of improvement, but the principal argument of this essay tends to place in a
strong point of view the improbability that the lower classes of people in
any country should ever be sufficiently free from want and labour to obtain
any high degree of intellectual improvement.

CHAPTER 12
Mr Godwin's conjecture concerning the indefinite prolongation of human life—
Improper inference drawn from the effects of mental stimulants on the human
frame, illustrated in various instances—Conjectures not founded on any
indications in the past not to be considered as philosophical conjectures—Mr
Godwin's and Mr Condorcet's conjecture respecting the approach of man
towards immortality on earth, a curious instance of the inconsistency of
scepticism.

Mr Godwin's conjecture respecting the future approach of man towards
immortality on earth seems to be rather oddly placed in a chapter which
professes to remove the objection to his system of equality from the
principle of population. Unless he supposes the passion between the sexes
to decrease faster than the duration of life increases, the earth would be
more encumbered than ever. But leaving this difficulty to Mr Godwin, let us
examine a few of the appearances from which the probable immortality of
man is inferred.

To prove the power of the mind over the body, Mr Godwin observes,
"How often do we find a piece of good news dissipating a distemper? How
common is the remark that those accidents which are to the indolent a
source of disease are forgotten and extirpated in the busy and active? I walk
twenty miles in an indolent and half determined temper and am extremely
fatigued. I walk twenty miles full of ardour, and with a motive that

engrosses my soul, and I come in as fresh and as alert as when I began my
journey. Emotion excited by some unexpected word, by a letter that is
delivered to us, occasions the most extraordinary revolutions in our frame,
accelerates the circulation, causes the heart to palpitate, the tongue to refuse
its office, and has been known to occasion death by extreme anguish or
extreme joy. There is nothing indeed of which the physician is more aware
than of the power of the mind in assisting or reading convalescence."

The instances here mentioned are chiefly instances of the effects of
mental stimulants on the bodily frame. No person has ever for a moment
doubted the near, though mysterious, connection of mind and body. But it is
arguing totally without knowledge of the nature of stimulants to suppose,
either that they can be applied continually with equal strength, or if they
could be so applied, for a time, that they would not exhaust and wear out
the subject. In some of the cases here noticed, the strength of the stimulus
depends upon its novelty and unexpectedness. Such a stimulus cannot, from
its nature, be repeated often with the same effect, as it would by repetition
lose that property which gives it its strength.

In the other cases, the argument is from a small and partial effect, to a
great and general effect, which will in numberless instances be found to be
a very fallacious mode of reasoning. The busy and active man may in some
degree counteract, or what is perhaps nearer the truth, may disregard those
slight disorders of frame which fix the attention of a man who has nothing
else to think of; but this does not tend to prove that activity of mind will
enable a man to disregard a high fever, the smallpox, or the plague.

The man who walks twenty miles with a motive that engrosses his soul
does not attend to his slight fatigue of body when he comes in; but double
his motive, and set him to walk another twenty miles, quadruple it, and let
him start a third time, and so on; and the length of his walk will ultimately
depend upon muscle and not mind. Powell, for a motive of ten guineas,
would have walked further probably than Mr Godwin, for a motive of half a
million. A motive of uncommon power acting upon a frame of moderate
strength would, perhaps, make the man kill himself by his exertions, but it
would not make him walk a hundred miles in twenty-four hours. This
statement of the case shews the fallacy of supposing that the person was

really not at all tired in his first walk of twenty miles, because he did not
appear to be so, or, perhaps, scarcely felt any fatigue himself. The mind
cannot fix its attention strongly on more than one object at once. The twenty
thousand pounds so engrossed his thoughts that he did not attend to any
slight soreness of foot, or stiffness of limb. But had he been really as fresh
and as alert, as when he first set off, he would be able to go the second
twenty miles with as much ease as the first, and so on, the third, &c. Which
leads to a palpable absurdity. When a horse of spirit is nearly half tired, by
the stimulus of the spur, added to the proper management of the bit, he may
be put so much upon his mettle, that he would appear to a standerby, as
fresh and as high spirited as if he had not gone a mile. Nay, probably, the
horse himself, while in the heat and passion occasioned by this stimulus,
would not feel any fatigue; but it would be strangely contrary to all reason
and experience, to argue from such an appearance that, if the stimulus were
continued, the horse would never be tired. The cry of a pack of hounds will
make some horses, after a journey of forty miles on the road, appear as
fresh, and as lively, as when they first set out. Were they then to be hunted,
no perceptible abatement would at first be felt by their riders in their
strength and spirits, but towards the end of a hard day, the previous fatigue
would have its full weight and effect, and make them tire sooner. When I
have taken a long walk with my gun, and met with no success, I have
frequently returned home feeling a considerable degree of
uncomfortableness from fatigue. Another day, perhaps, going over nearly
the same extent of ground with a good deal of sport, I have come home
fresh, and alert. The difference in the sensation of fatigue upon coming in,
on the different days, may have been very striking, but on the following
mornings I have found no such difference. I have not perceived that I was
less stiff in my limbs, or less footsore, on the morning after the day of the
sport, than on the other morning.

In all these cases, stimulants upon the mind seem to act rather by taking
off the attention from the bodily fatigue, than by really and truly
counteracting it. If the energy of my mind had really counteracted the
fatigue of my body, why should I feel tired the next morning? if the
stimulus of the hounds had as completely overcome the fatigue of the
journey in reality, as it did in appearance, why should the horse be tired
sooner than if he had not gone the forty miles? I happen to have a very bad

fit of the toothache at the time I am writing this. In the eagerness of
composition, I every now and then, for a moment or two, forget it. Yet I
cannot help thinking that the process, which causes the pain, is still going
forwards, and that the nerves which carry the information of it to the brain
are even during these moments demanding attention and room for their
appropriate vibrations. The multiplicity of vibrations of another kind may
perhaps prevent their admission, or overcome them for a time when
admitted, till a shoot of extraordinary energy puts all other vibration to the
rout, destroys the vividness of my argumentative conceptions, and rides
triumphant in the brain. In this case, as in the others, the mind seems to
have little or no power in counteracting or curing the disorder, but merely
possesses a power, if strongly excited, of fixing its attention on other
subjects.

I do not, however, mean to say that a sound and vigorous mind has no
tendency whatever to keep the body in a similar state. So close and intimate
is the union of mind and body that it would be highly extraordinary if they
did not mutually assist each other's functions. But, perhaps, upon a
comparison, the body has more effect upon the mind than the mind upon the
body. The first object of the mind is to act as purveyor to the wants of the
body. When these wants are completely satisfied, an active mind is indeed
apt to wander further, to range over the fields of science, or sport in the
regions of. Imagination, to fancy that it has 'shuffled off this mortal coil',
and is seeking its kindred element. But all these efforts are like the vain
exertions of the hare in the fable. The slowly moving tortoise, the body,
never fails to overtake the mind, however widely and extensively it may
have ranged, and the brightest and most energetic intellects, unwillingly as
they may attend to the first or second summons, must ultimately yield the
empire of the brain to the calls of hunger, or sink with the exhausted body
in sleep.

It seems as if one might say with certainty that if a medicine could be
found to immortalize the body there would be no fear of its [not] being
accompanied by the immortality of the mind. But the immortality of the
mind by no means seems to infer the immortality of the body. On the
contrary, the greatest conceivable energy of mind would probably exhaust
and destroy the strength of the body. A temperate vigour of mind appears to

be favourable to health, but very great intellectual exertions tend rather, as
has been often observed, to wear out the scabbard. Most of the instances
which Mr Godwin has brought to prove the power of the mind over the
body, and the consequent probability of the immortality of man, are of this
latter description, and could such stimulants be continually applied, instead
of tending to immortalize, they would tend very rapidly to destroy the
human frame.

The probable increase of the voluntary power of man over his animal
frame comes next under Mr Godwin's consideration, and he concludes by
saying, that the voluntary power of some men, in this respect, is found to
extend to various articles in which other men are impotent. But this is
reasoning against an almost universal rule from a few exceptions; and these
exceptions seem to be rather tricks, than powers that may be exerted to any
good purpose. I have never heard of any man who could regulate his pulse
in a fever, and doubt much, if any of the persons here alluded to have made
the smallest perceptible progress in the regular correction of the disorders of
their frames and the consequent prolongation of their lives.

Mr Godwin says, 'Nothing can be more unphilosophical than to
conclude, that, because a certain species of power is beyond the train of our
present observation, that it is beyond the limits of the human mind.' I own
my ideas of philosophy are in this respect widely different from Mr
Godwin's. The only distinction that I see, between a philosophical
conjecture, and the assertions of the Prophet Mr Brothers, is, that one is
founded upon indications arising from the train of our present observations,
and the other has no foundation at all. I expect that great discoveries are yet
to take place in all the branches of human science, particularly in physics;
but the moment we leave past experience as the foundation of our
conjectures concerning the future, and, still more, if our conjectures
absolutely contradict past experience, we are thrown upon a wide field of
uncertainty, and any one supposition is then just as good as another. If a
person were to tell me that men would ultimately have eyes and hands
behind them as well as before them, I should admit the usefulness of the
addition, but should give as a reason for my disbelief of it, that I saw no
indications whatever in the past from which I could infer the smallest
probability of such a change. If this be not allowed a valid objection, all

conjectures are alike, and all equally philosophical. I own it appears to me
that in the train of our present observations, there are no more genuine
indications that man will become immortal upon earth than that he will
have four eyes and four hands, or that trees will grow horizontally instead
of perpendicularly.

It will be said, perhaps, that many discoveries have already taken place
in the world that were totally unforeseen and unexpected. This I grant to be
true; but if a person had predicted these discoveries without being guided
by any analogies or indications from past facts, he would deserve the name
of seer or prophet, but not of philosopher. The wonder that some of our
modern discoveries would excite in the savage inhabitants of Europe in the
times of Theseus and Achilles, proves but little. Persons almost entirely
unacquainted with the powers of a machine cannot be expected to guess at
its effects. I am far from saying, that we are at present by any means fully
acquainted with the powers of the human mind; but we certainly know
more of this instrument than was known four thousand years ago; and
therefore, though not to be called competent judges, we are certainly much
better able than savages to say what is, or is not, within its grasp. A watch
would strike a savage with as much surprise as a perpetual motion; yet one
is to us a most familiar piece of mechanism, and the other has constantly
eluded the efforts of the most acute intellects. In many instances we are now
able to perceive the causes, which prevent an unlimited improvement in
those inventions, which seemed to promise fairly for it at first. The original
improvers of telescopes would probably think, that as long as the size of the
specula and the length of the tubes could be increased, the powers and
advantages of the instrument would increase; but experience has since
taught us, that the smallness of the field, the deficiency of light, and the
circumstance of the atmosphere being magnified, prevent the beneficial
results that were to be expected from telescopes of extraordinary size and
power. In many parts of knowledge, man has been almost constantly
making some progress; in other parts, his efforts have been invariably
baffled. The savage would not probably be able to guess at the causes of
this mighty difference. Our further experience has given us some little
insight into these causes, and has therefore enabled us better to judge, if not
of what we are to expect in future, at least of what we are not to expect,
which, though negative, is a very useful piece of information.

As the necessity of sleep seems rather to depend upon the body than the
mind, it does not appear how the improvement of the mind can tend very
greatly to supersede this 'conspicuous infirmity'. A man who by great
excitements on his mind is able to pass two or three nights without sleep,
proportionably exhausts the vigour of his body, and this diminution of
health and strength will soon disturb the operations of his understanding, so
that by these great efforts he appears to have made no real progress
whatever in superseding the necessity of this species of rest.

There is certainly a sufficiently marked difference in the various
characters of which we have some knowledge, relative to the energies of
their minds, their benevolent pursuits, etc., to enable us to judge whether
the operations of intellect have any decided effect in prolonging the
duration of human life. It is certain that no decided effect of this kind has
yet been observed. Though no attention of any kind has ever produced such
an effect as could be construed into the smallest semblance of an approach
towards immortality, yet of the two, a certain attention to the body seems to
have more effect in this respect than an attention to the mind. The man who
takes his temperate meals and his bodily exercise, with scrupulous
regularity, will generally be found more healthy than the man who, very
deeply engaged in intellectual pursuits, often forgets for a time these bodily
cravings. The citizen who has retired, and whose ideas, perhaps, scarcely
soar above or extend beyond his little garden, puddling all the morning
about his borders of box, will, perhaps, live as long as the philosopher
whose range of intellect is the most extensive, and whose views are the
clearest of any of his contemporaries. It has been positively observed by
those who have attended to the bills of mortality that women live longer
upon an average than men, and, though I would not by any means say that
their intellectual faculties are inferior, yet, I think, it must be allowed that,
from their different education, there are not so many women as men, who
are excited to vigorous mental exertion.

As in these and similar instances, or to take a larger range, as in the great
diversity of characters that have existed during some thousand years, no
decided difference has been observed in the duration of human life from the
operation of intellect, the mortality of man on earth seems to be as
completely established, and exactly upon the same grounds, as any one, the

most constant, of the laws of nature. An immediate act of power in the
Creator of the Universe might, indeed, change one or all of these laws,
either suddenly or gradually, but without some indications of such a change,
and such indications do not exist, it. Is just as unphilosophical to suppose
that the life of man may be prolonged beyond any assignable limits, as to
suppose that the attraction of the earth will gradually be changed into
repulsion and that stones will ultimately rise instead of fall or that the earth
will fly off at a certain period to some more genial and warmer sun.

The conclusion of this chapter presents us, undoubtedly, with a very
beautiful and desirable picture, but like some of the landscapes drawn from
fancy and not imagined with truth, it fails of that interest in the heart which
nature and probability can alone give.

I cannot quit this subject without taking notice of these conjectures of
Mr Godwin and Mr Condorcet concerning the indefinite prolongation of
human life, as a very curious instance of the longing of the soul after
immortality. Both these gentlemen have rejected the light of revelation
which absolutely promises eternal life in another state. They have also
rejected the light of natural religion, which to the ablest intellects in all ages
has indicated the future existence of the soul. Yet so congenial is the idea of
immortality to the mind of man that they cannot consent entirely to throw it
out of their systems. After all their fastidious scepticisms concerning the
only probable mode of immortality, they introduce a species of immortality
of their own, not only completely contradictory to every law of
philosophical probability, but in itself in the highest degree narrow, partial,
and unjust. They suppose that all the great, virtuous, and exalted minds that
have ever existed or that may exist for some thousands, perhaps millions of
years, will be sunk in annihilation, and that only a few beings, not greater in
number than can exist at once upon the earth, will be ultimately crowned
with immortality. Had such a tenet been advanced as a tenet of revelation I
am very sure that all the enemies of religion, and probably Mr Godwin and
Mr Condorcet among the rest, would have exhausted the whole force of
their ridicule upon it, as the most puerile, the most absurd, the poorest, the
most pitiful, the most iniquitously unjust, and, consequently, the most
unworthy of the Deity that the superstitious folly of man could invent.

What a strange and curious proof do these conjectures exhibit of the
inconsistency of scepticism! For it should be observed, that there is a very
striking and essential difference between believing an assertion which
absolutely contradicts the most uniform experience, and an assertion which
contradicts nothing, but is merely beyond the power of our present
observation and knowledge. So diversified are the natural objects around
us, so many instances of mighty power daily offer themselves to our view,
that we may fairly presume, that there are many forms and operations of
nature which we have not yet observed, or which, perhaps, we are not
capable of observing with our present confined inlets of knowledge. The
resurrection of a spiritual body from a natural body does not appear in itself
a more wonderful instance of power than the germination of a blade of
wheat from the grain, or of an oak from an acorn. Could we conceive an
intelligent being, so placed as to be conversant only with inanimate or full
grown objects, and never to have witnessed the process of vegetation and
growth; and were another being to shew him two little pieces of matter, a
grain of wheat, and an acorn, to desire him to examine them, to analyse
them if he pleased, and endeavour to find out their properties and essences;
and then to tell him, that however trifling these little bits of matter might
appear to him, that they possessed such curious powers of selection,
combination, arrangement, and almost of creation, that upon being put into
the ground, they would choose, amongst all the dirt and moisture that
surrounded them, those parts which best suited their purpose, that they
would collect and arrange these parts with wonderful taste, judgement, and
execution, and would rise up into beautiful forms, scarcely in any respect
analogous to the little bits of matter which were first placed in the earth. I
feel very little doubt that the imaginary being which I have supposed would
hesitate more, would require better authority, and stronger proofs, before he
believed these strange assertions, than if he had been told, that a being of
mighty power, who had been the cause of all that he saw around him, and of
that existence of which he himself was conscious, would, by a great act of
power upon the death and corruption of human creatures, raise up the
essence of thought in an incorporeal, or at least invisible form, to give it a
happier existence in another state.

The only difference, with regard to our own apprehensions, that is not in
favour of the latter assertion is that the first miracle we have repeatedly

seen, and the last miracle we have not seen. I admit the full weight of this
prodigious difference, but surely no man can hesitate a moment in saying
that, putting Revelation out of the question, the resurrection of a spiritual
body from a natural body, which may be merely one among the many
operations of nature which we cannot see, is an event indefinitely more
probable than the immortality of man on earth, which is not only an event
of which no symptoms or indications have yet appeared, but is a positive
contradiction to one of the most constant of the laws of nature that has ever
come within the observation of man.

When we extend our view beyond this life, it is evident that we can have
no other guides than authority, or conjecture, and perhaps, indeed, an
obscure and undefined feeling. What I say here, therefore, does not appear
to me in any respect to contradict what I said before, when I observed that it
was unphilosophical to expect any specifick event that was not indicated by
some kind of analogy in the past. In ranging beyond the bourne from which
no traveller returns, we must necessarily quit this rule; but with regard to
events that may be expected to happen on earth, we can seldom quit it
consistently with true philosophy. Analogy has, however, as I conceive,
great latitude. For instance, man has discovered many of the laws of nature:
analogy seems to indicate that he will discover many more; but no analogy
seems to indicate that he will discover a sixth sense, or a new species of
power in the human mind, entirely beyond the train of our present
observations.

The powers of selection, combination, and transmutation, which every
seed shews, are truly miraculous. Who can imagine that these wonderful
faculties are contained in these little bits of matter? To me it appears much
more philosophical to suppose that the mighty God of nature is present in
full energy in all these operations. To this all powerful Being, it would be
equally easy to raise an oak without an acorn as with one. The preparatory
process of putting seeds into the ground is merely ordained for the use of
man, as one among the various other excitements necessary to awaken
matter into mind. It is an idea that will be found consistent, equally with the
natural phenomena around us, with the various events of human life, and
with the successive revelations of God to man, to suppose that the world is
a mighty process for the creation and formation of mind. Many vessels will

necessarily come out of this great furnace in wrong shapes. These will be
broken and thrown aside as useless; while those vessels whose forms are
full of truth, grace, and loveliness, will be wafted into happier situations,
nearer the presence of the mighty maker.

I ought perhaps again to make an apology to my readers for dwelling so
long upon a conjecture which many, I know, will think too absurd and
improbable to require the least discussion. But if it be as improbable and as
contrary to the genuine spirit of philosophy as I own I think it is, why
should it not be shewn to be so in a candid examination? A conjecture,
however improbable on the first view of it, advanced by able and ingenious
men, seems at least to deserve investigation. For my own part I feel no
disinclination whatever to give that degree of credit to the opinion of the
probable immortality of man on earth, which the appearances that can be
brought in support of it deserve. Before we decide upon the utter
improbability of such an event, it is but fair impartially to examine these
appearances; and from such an examination I think we may conclude, that
we have rather less reason for supposing that the life of man may be
indefinitely prolonged, than that trees may be made to grow indefinitely
high, or potatoes indefinitely large. Though Mr Godwin advances the idea
of the indefinite prolongation of human life merely as a conjecture, yet as
he has produced some appearances, which in his conception favour the
supposition, he must certainly intend that these appearances should be
examined and this is all that I have meant to do.

CHAPTER 13
Error of Mr Godwin is considering man too much in the light of a being merely
rational—In the compound being, man, the passions will always act as disturbing
forces in the decisions of the understanding—Reasonings of Mr Godwin on the
subject of coercion—Some truths of a nature not to be communicated from one
man to another.

In the chapter which I have been examining, Mr Godwin professes to
consider the objection to his system of equality from the principle of
population. It has appeared, I think clearly, that he is greatly erroneous in
his statement of the distance of this difficulty, and that instead of myriads of
centuries, it is really not thirty years, or even thirty days, distant from us.
The supposition of the approach of man to immortality on earth is certainly
not of a kind to soften the difficulty. The only argument, therefore, in the
chapter which has any tendency to remove the objection is the conjecture
concerning the extinction of the passion between the sexes, but as this is a
mere conjecture, unsupported by the smallest shadow of proof, the force of
the objection may be fairly said to remain unimpaired, and it is undoubtedly
of sufficient weight of itself completely to overturn Mr Godwin's whole
system of equality. I will, however, make one or two observations on a few
of the prominent parts of Mr Godwin's reasonings which will contribute to
place in a still clearer point of view the little hope that we can reasonably
entertain of those vast improvements in the nature of man and of society
which he holds up to our admiring gaze in his Political Justice.

Mr Godwin considers man too much in the light of a being merely
intellectual. This error, at least such I conceive it to be, pervades his whole
work and mixes itself with all his reasonings. The voluntary actions of men
may originate in their opinions, but these opinions will be very differently
modified in creatures compounded of a rational faculty and corporal
propensities from what they would be in beings wholly intellectual. Mr
Godwin, in proving that sound reasoning and truth are capable of being
adequately communicated, examines the proposition first practically, and
then adds, 'Such is the appearance which this proposition assumes, when
examined in a loose and practical view. In strict consideration it will not
admit of debate. Man is a rational being, etc.' (Bk. I, ch. 5; in the third
edition Vol. I, p. 88). So far from calling this a strict consideration of the
subject, I own I should call it the loosest, and most erroneous, way possible,
of considering it. It is the calculating the velocity of a falling body in vacuo,
and persisting in it, that it would be the same through whatever resisting
mediums it might fall. This was not Newton's mode of philosophizing. Very
few general propositions are just in application to a particular subject. The
moon is not kept in her orbit round the earth, nor the earth in her orbit round
the sun, by a force that varies merely in the inverse ratio of the squares of

the distances. To make the general theory just in application to the
revolutions of these bodies, it was necessary to calculate accurately the
disturbing force of the sun upon the moon, and of the moon upon the earth;
and till these disturbing forces were properly estimated, actual observations
on the motions of these bodies would have proved that the theory was not
accurately true.

I am willing to allow that every voluntary act is preceded by a decision
of the mind, but it is strangely opposite to what I should conceive to be the
just theory upon the subject, and a palpable contradiction to all experience,
to say that the corporal propensities of man do not act very powerfully, as
disturbing forces, in these decisions. The question, therefore, does not
merely depend upon whether a man may be made to understand a distinct
proposition or be convinced by an unanswerable argument. A truth may be
brought home to his conviction as a rational being, though he may
determine to act contrary to it, as a compound being. The cravings of
hunger, the love of liquor, the desire of possessing a beautiful woman, will
urge men to actions, of the fatal consequences of which, to the general
interests of society, they are perfectly well convinced, even at the very time
they commit them. Remove their bodily cravings, and they would not
hesitate a moment in determining against such actions. Ask them their
opinion of the same conduct in another person, and they would immediately
reprobate it. But in their own case, and under all the circumstances of their
situation with these bodily cravings, the decision of the compound being is
different from the conviction of the rational being.

If this be the just view of the subject, and both theory and experience
unite to prove that it is, almost all Mr Godwin's reasonings on the subject of
coercion in his seventh chapter, will appear to be founded on error. He
spends some time in placing in a ridiculous point of view the attempt to
convince a man's understanding and to clear up a doubtful proposition in his
mind, by blows. Undoubtedly it is both ridiculous and barbarous, and so is
cock-fighting, but one has little more to do with the real object of human
punishments than the other. One frequent (indeed much too frequent) mode
of punishment is death. Mr Godwin will hardly think this intended for
conviction, at least it does not appear how the individual or the society

could reap much future benefit from an understanding enlightened in this
manner.

The principal objects which human punishments have in view are
undoubtedly restraint and example; restraint, or removal, of an individual
member whose vicious habits are likely to be prejudicial to the society'; and
example, which by expressing the sense of the community with regard to a
particular crime, and by associating more nearly and visibly crime and
punishment, holds out a moral motive to dissuade others from the
commission of it.

Restraint, Mr Godwin thinks, may be permitted as a temporary
expedient, though he reprobates solitary imprisonment, which has certainly
been the most successful, and, indeed, almost the only attempt towards the
moral amelioration of offenders. He talks of the selfish passions that are
fostered by solitude and of the virtues generated in society. But surely these
virtues are not generated in the society of a prison. Were the offender
confined to the society of able and virtuous men he would probably be more
improved than in solitude. But is this practicable? Mr Godwin's ingenuity is
more frequently employed in finding out evils than in suggesting practical
remedies.

Punishment, for example, is totally reprobated. By endeavouring to
make examples too impressive and terrible, nations have, indeed, been led
into the most barbarous cruelties, but the abuse of any practice is not a good
argument against its use. The indefatigable pains taken in this country to
find out a murder, and the certainty of its punishment, has powerfully
contributed to generate that sentiment which is frequent in the mouths of
the common people, that a murder will sooner or later come to light; and the
habitual horror in which murder is in consequence held will make a man, in
the agony of passion, throw down his knife for fear he should be tempted to
use it in the gratification of his revenge. In Italy, where murderers, by flying
to a sanctuary, are allowed more frequently to escape, the crime has never
been held in the same detestation and has consequently been more frequent.
No man, who is at all aware of the operation of moral motives, can doubt
for a moment, that if every murder in Italy had been invariably punished,

the use of the stiletto in transports of passion would have been
comparatively but little known.

That human laws either do, or can, proportion the punishment accurately
to the offence, no person will have the folly to assert. From the
inscrutability of motives the thing is absolutely impossible, but this
imperfection, though it may be called a species of injustice, is no valid
argument against human laws. It is the lot of man, that he will frequently
have to choose between two evils; and it is a sufficient reason for the
adoption of any institution, that it is the best mode that suggests itself of
preventing greater evils. A continual endeavour should undoubtedly prevail
to make these institutions as perfect as the nature of them will admit. But
nothing is so easy as to find fault with human institutions; nothing so
difficult as to suggest adequate practical improvements. It is to be lamented,
that more men of talents employ their time in the former occupation than in
the latter.

The frequency of crime among men, who, as the common saying is,
know better, sufficiently proves, that some truths may be brought home to
the conviction of the mind without always producing the proper effect upon
the conduct. There are other truths of a nature that perhaps never can be
adequately communicated from one man to another. The superiority of the
pleasures of intellect to those of sense, Mr Godwin considers as a
fundamental truth. Taking all circumstances into consideration, I should be
disposed to agree with him; but how am I to communicate this truth to a
person who has scarcely ever felt intellectual pleasure? I may as well
attempt to explain the nature and beauty of colours to a blind man. If I am
ever so laborious, patient, and clear, and have the most repeated
opportunities of expostulation, any real progress toward the
accomplishment of my purpose seems absolutely hopeless. There is no
common measure between us. I cannot proceed step by step.. It is a truth of
a nature absolutely incapable of demonstration. All that I can say is, that the
wisest and best men in all ages had agreed in giving the preference, very
greatly, to the pleasures of intellect; and that my own experience completely
confirmed the truth of their decisions; that I had found sensual pleasures
vain, transient, and continually attended with tedium and disgust; but that
intellectual pleasures appeared to me ever fresh and young, filled up all my

hours satisfactorily, gave a new zest to life, and diffused a lasting serenity
over my mind. If he believe me, it can only be from respect and veneration
for my authority. It is credulity, and not conviction. I have not said any
thing, nor can any thing be said, of a nature to produce real conviction. The
affair is not an affair of reasoning, but of experience. He would probably
observe in reply, what you say may be very true with regard to yourself and
many other good men, but for my own part I feel very differently upon the
subject. I have very frequently taken up a book and almost as frequently
gone to sleep over it; but when I pass an evening with a gay party, or a
pretty woman, I feel alive, and in spirits, and truly enjoy my existence.

Under such circumstances, reasoning and arguments are not instruments
from which success can be expected. At some future time perhaps, real
satiety of sensual pleasures, or some accidental impressions that awakened
the energies of his mind, might effect that, in a month, which the most
patient and able expostulations might be incapable of effecting in forty
years.

CHAPTER 14
Mr Godwin's five propositions respecting political truth, on which his whole
work hinges, not established—Reasons we have for supposing, from the distress
occasioned by the principle of population, that the vices and moral weakness of
man can never be wholly eradicated—Perfectibility, in the sense in which Mr
Godwin uses the term, not applicable to man—Nature of the real perfectibility of
man illustrated.

If the reasonings of the preceding chapter are just, the corollaries
respecting political truth, which Mr Godwin draws from the proposition,
that the voluntary actions of men originate in their opinions, will not appear
to be clearly established. These corollaries are, "Sound reasoning and truth,
when adequately communicated, must always be victorious over error:
Sound reasoning and truth are capable of being so communicated: Truth is

omnipotent: The vices and moral weakness of man are not invincible: Man
is perfectible, or in other words, susceptible of perpetual improvement."

The first three propositions may be considered a complete syllogism. If
by adequately communicated, be meant such a conviction as to produce an
adequate effect upon the conduct, the major may be allowed and the minor
denied. The consequent, or the omnipotence of truth, of course falls to the
ground. If by 'adequately communicated' be meant merely the conviction of
the rational faculty, the major must be denied, the minor will be only true in
cases capable of demonstration, and the consequent equally falls. The fourth
proposition Mr Godwin calls the preceding proposition, with a slight
variation in the statement. If so, it must accompany the preceding
proposition in its fall. But it may be worth while to inquire, with reference
to the principal argument of this essay, into the particular reasons which we
have for supposing that the vices and moral weakness of man can never be
wholly overcome in this world.

Man, according to Mr Godwin, is a creature formed what he is by the
successive impressions which he has received, from the first moment that
the germ from which he sprung was animated. Could he be placed in a
situation, where he was subject to no evil impressions whatever, though it
might be doubted whether in such a situation virtue could exist, vice would
certainly be banished. The great bent of Mr Godwin's work on Political
Justice, if I understand it rightly, is to shew that the greater part of the vices
and weaknesses of men proceed from the injustice of their political and
social institutions, and that if these were removed and the understandings of
men more enlightened, there would be little or no temptation in the world to
evil. As it has been clearly proved, however, (at least as I think) that this is
entirely a false conception, and that, independent of any political or social
institutions whatever, the greater part of mankind, from the fixed and
unalterable laws of nature, must ever be subject to the evil temptations
arising from want, besides other passions, it follows from Mr Godwin's
definition of man that such impressions, and combinations of impressions,
cannot be afloat in the world without generating a variety of bad men.
According to Mr Godwin's own conception of the formation of character, it
is surely as improbable that under such circumstances all men will be
virtuous as that sixes will come up a hundred times following upon the dice.

The great variety of combinations upon the dice in a repeated succession of
throws appears to me not inaptly to represent the great variety of character
that must necessarily exist in the world, supposing every individual to be
formed what he is by that combination of impressions which he has
received since his first existence. And this comparison will, in some
measure, shew the absurdity of supposing, that exceptions will ever become
general rules; that extraordinary and unusual combinations will be frequent;
or that the individual instances of great virtue which had appeared in all
ages of the world will ever prevail universally.

I am aware that Mr Godwin might say that the comparison is in one
respect inaccurate, that in the case of the dice, the preceding causes, or
rather the chances respecting the preceding causes, were always the same,
and that, therefore, I could have no good reason for supposing that a greater
number of sixes would come up in the next hundred times of throwing than
in the preceding same number of throws. But, that man had in some sort a
power of influencing those causes that formed character, and that every
good and virtuous man that was produced, by the influence which he must
necessarily have, rather increased the probability that another such virtuous
character would be generated, whereas the coming up of sixes upon the dice
once, would certainly not increase the probability of their coming up a
second time. I admit this objection to the accuracy of the comparison, but it
is only partially valid. Repeated experience has assured us, that the
influence of the most virtuous character will rarely prevail against very
strong temptations to evil. It will undoubtedly affect some, but it will fail
with a much greater number. Had Mr Godwin succeeded in his attempt to
prove that these temptations to evil could by the exertions of man be
removed, I would give up the comparison; or at least allow, that a man
might be so far enlightened with regard to the mode of shaking his elbow,
that he would be able to throw sixes every time. But as long as a great
number of those impressions which form character, like the nice motions of
the arm, remain absolutely independent of the will of man, though it would
be the height of folly and presumption to attempt to calculate the relative
proportions of virtue and vice at the future periods of the world, it may be
safely asserted that the vices and moral weakness of mankind, taken in the
mass, are invincible.

The fifth proposition is the general deduction from the four former and
will consequently fall, as the foundations which support it have given way.
In the sense in which Mr Godwin understands the term 'perfectible', the
perfectibility of man cannot be asserted, unless the preceding propositions
could have been clearly established. There is, however, one sense, which
the term will bear, in which it is, perhaps, just. It may be said with truth that
man is always susceptible of improvement, or that there never has been, or
will be, a period of his history, in which he can be said to have reached his
possible acme of perfection. Yet it does not by any means follow from this,
that our efforts to improve man will always succeed, or even that he will
ever make, in the greatest number of ages, any extraordinary strides towards
perfection. The only inference that can be drawn is that the precise limit of
his improvement cannot possibly be known. And I cannot help again
reminding the reader of a distinction which, it appears to me, ought
particularly to be attended to in the present question: I mean, the essential
difference there is between an unlimited improvement and an improvement
the limit of which cannot be ascertained. The former is an improvement not
applicable to man under the present laws of his nature. The latter,
undoubtedly, is applicable.

The real perfectibility of man may be illustrated, as I have mentioned
before, by the perfectibility of a plant. The object of the enterprising florist
is, as I conceive, to unite size, symmetry, and beauty of colour. It would
surely be presumptuous in the most successful improver to affirm, that he
possessed a carnation in which these qualities existed in the greatest
possible state of perfection. However beautiful his flower may be, other
care, other soil, or other suns, might produce one still more beautiful.

Yet, although he may be aware of the absurdity of supposing that he has
reached perfection, and though he may know by what means he attained
that degree of beauty in the flower which he at present possesses, yet he
cannot be sure that by pursuing similar means, rather increased in strength,
he will obtain a more beautiful blossom. By endeavouring to improve one
quality, he may impair the beauty of another. The richer mould which he
would employ to increase the size of his plant would probably burst the
calyx, and destroy at once its symmetry. In a similar manner, the forcing
manure used to bring about the French Revolution, and to give a greater

freedom and energy to the human mind, has burst the calyx of humanity, the
restraining bond of all society; and, however large the separate petals have
grown, however strongly, or even beautifully, a few of them have been
marked, the whole is at present a loose, deformed, disjointed mass, without
union, symmetry, or harmony of colouring.

Were it of consequence to improve pinks and carnations, though we
could have no hope of raising them as large as cabbages, we might
undoubtedly expect, by successive efforts, to obtain more beautiful
specimens than we at present possess. No person can deny the importance
of improving the happiness of the human species. Every the least advance
in this respect is highly valuable. But an experiment with the human race is
not like an experiment upon inanimate objects. The bursting of a flower
may be a trifle. Another will soon succeed it. But the bursting of the bonds
of society is such a separation of parts as cannot take place without giving
the most acute pain to thousands: and a long time may elapse, and much
misery may be endured, before the wound grows up again.

As the five propositions which I have been examining may be
considered as the corner stones of Mr Godwin's fanciful structure, and,
indeed, as expressing the aim and bent of his whole work, however
excellent much of his detached reasoning may be, he must be considered as
having failed in the great object of his undertaking. Besides the difficulties
arising from the compound nature of man, which he has by no means
sufficiently smoothed, the principal argument against the perfectibility of
man and society remains whole and unimpaired from any thing that he has
advanced. And as far as I can trust my own judgement, this argument
appears to be conclusive, not only against the perfectibility of man, in the
enlarged sense in which Mr Godwin understands the term, but against any
very marked and striking change for the better, in the form and structure of
general society; by which I mean any great and decided amelioration of the
condition of the lower classes of mankind, the most numerous, and,
consequently, in a general view of the subject, the most important part of
the human race. Were I to live a thousand years, and the laws of nature to
remain the same, I should little fear, or rather little hope, a contradiction
from experience in asserting that no possible sacrifices or exertions of the
rich, in a country which had been long inhabited, could for any time place

the lower classes of the community in a situation equal, with regard to
circumstances, to the situation of the common people about thirty years ago
in the northern States of America.

The lower classes of people in Europe may at some future period be
much better instructed than they are at present; they may be taught to
employ the little spare time they have in many better ways than at the ale-
house; they may live under better and more equal laws than they have ever
hitherto done, perhaps, in any country; and I even conceive it possible,
though not probable that they may have more leisure; but it is not in the
nature of things that they can be awarded such a quantity of money or
subsistence as will allow them all to marry early, in the full confidence that
they shall be able to provide with ease for a numerous family.

CHAPTER 15
Models too perfect may sometimes rather impede than promote improvement—
Mr Godwin's essay on 'Avarice and Profusion'—Impossibility of dividing the
necessary labour of a society amicably among all—Invectives against labour
may produce present evil, with little or no chance of producing future good—An
accession to the mass of agricultural labour must always be an advantage to the
labourer.

Mr Godwin in the preface to his Enquirer, drops a few expressions which
seem to hint at some change in his opinions since he wrote the Political
Justice; and as this is a work now of some years standing, I should certainly
think that I had been arguing against opinions which the author had himself
seen reason to alter, but that in some of the essays of the Enquirer, Mr
Godwin's peculiar mode of thinking appears in as striking a light as ever.

It has been frequently observed that though we cannot hope to reach
perfection in any thing, yet that it must always be advantageous to us to
place before our eyes the most perfect models. This observation has a

plausible appearance, but is very far from being generally true. I even doubt
its truth in one of the most obvious exemplifications that would occur. I
doubt whether a very young painter would receive so much benefit, from an
attempt to copy a highly finished and perfect picture, as from copying one
where the outlines were more strongly marked and the manner of laying on
the colours was more easily discoverable. But in cases where the perfection
of the model is a perfection of a different and superior nature from that
towards which we should naturally advance, we shall not always fail in
making any progress towards it, but we shall in all probability impede the
progress which we might have expected to make had we not fixed our eyes
upon so perfect a model. A highly intellectual being, exempt from the
infirm calls of hunger or sleep, is undoubtedly a much more perfect
existence than man, but were man to attempt to copy such a model, he
would not only fail in making any advances towards it; but by unwisely
straining to imitate what was inimitable, he would probably destroy the
little intellect which he was endeavouring to improve.

The form and structure of society which Mr Godwin describes is as
essentially distinct from any forms of society which have hitherto prevailed
in the world as a being that can live without food or sleep is from a man. By
improving society in its present form, we are making no more advances
towards such a state of things as he pictures than we should make
approaches towards a line, with regard to which we were walking parallel.
The question, therefore, is whether, by looking to such a form of society as
our polar star, we are likely to advance or retard the improvement of the
human species? Mr Godwin appears to me to have decided this question
against himself in his essay on 'Avarice and Profusion' in the Enquirer.

Dr Adam Smith has very justly observed that nations as well as
individuals grow rich by parsimony and poor by profusion, and that,
therefore, every frugal man was a friend and every spendthrift an enemy to
his country. The reason he gives is that what is saved from revenue is
always added to stock, and is therefore taken from the maintenance of
labour that is generally unproductive and employed in the maintenance of
labour that realizes itself in valuable commodities. No observation can be
more evidently just. The subject of Mr Godwin's essay is a little similar in
its first appearance, but in essence is as distinct as possible. He considers

the mischief of profusion as an acknowledged truth, and therefore makes
his comparison between the avaricious man, and the man who spends his
income. But the avaricious man of Mr Godwin is totally a distinct character,
at least with regard to his effect upon the prosperity of the state, from the
frugal man of Dr Adam Smith. The frugal man in order to make more
money saves from his income and adds to his capital, and this capital he
either employs himself in the maintenance of productive labour, or he lends
it to some other person who will probably employ it in this way. He benefits
the state because he adds to its general capital, and because wealth
employed as capital not only sets in motion more labour than when spent as
income, but the labour is besides of a more valuable kind. But the
avaricious man of Mr Godwin locks up his wealth in a chest and sets in
motion no labour of any kind, either productive or unproductive. This is so
essential a difference that Mr Godwin's decision in his essay appears at
once as evidently false as Dr Adam Smith's position is evidently true. It
could not, indeed, but occur to Mr Godwin that some present inconvenience
might arise to the poor from thus locking up the funds destined for the
maintenance of labour. The only way, therefore, he had of weakening this
objection was to compare the two characters chiefly with regard to their
tendency to accelerate the approach of that happy state of cultivated
equality, on which he says we ought always to fix our eyes as our polar star.

I think it has been proved in the former parts of this essay that such a
state of society is absolutely impracticable. What consequences then are we
to expect from looking to such a point as our guide and polar star in the
great sea of political discovery? Reason would teach us to expect no other
than winds perpetually adverse, constant but fruitless toil, frequent
shipwreck, and certain misery. We shall not only fail in making the smallest
real approach towards such a perfect form of society; but by wasting our
strength of mind and body, in a direction in which it is impossible to
proceed, and by the frequent distress which we must necessarily occasion
by our repeated failures, we shall evidently impede that degree of
improvement in society, which is really attainable.

It has appeared that a society constituted according to Mr Godwin's
system must, from the inevitable laws of our nature, degenerate into a class
of proprietors and a class of labourers, and that the substitution of

benevolence for self-love as the moving principle of society, instead of
producing the happy effects that might be expected from so fair a name,
would cause the same pressure of want to be felt by the whole of society,
which is now felt only by a part. It is to the established administration of
property and to the apparently narrow principle of self-love that we are
indebted for all the noblest exertions of human genius, all the finer and
more delicate emotions of the soul, for everything, indeed, that
distinguishes the civilized from the savage state; and no sufficient change
has as yet taken place in the nature of civilized man to enable us to say that
he either is, or ever will be, in a state when he may safely throw down the
ladder by which he has risen to this eminence.

If in every society that has advanced beyond the savage state, a class of
proprietors and a class of labourers must necessarily exist, it is evident that,
as labour is the only property of the class of labourers, every thing that
tends to diminish the value of this property must tend to diminish the
possession of this part of society. The only way that a poor man has of
supporting himself in independence is by the exertion of his bodily strength.
This is the only commodity he has to give in exchange for the necessaries
of life. It would hardly appear then that you benefit him by narrowing the
market for this commodity, by decreasing the demand for labour, and
lessening the value of the only property that he possesses.

It should be observed that the principal argument of this Essay only goes
to prove the necessity of a class of proprietors, and a class of labourers, but
by no means infers that the present great inequality of property is either
necessary or useful to society. On the contrary, it must certainly be
considered as an evil, and every institution that promotes it is essentially
bad and impolitic. But whether a government could with advantage to
society actively interfere to repress inequality of fortunes may be a matter
of doubt. Perhaps the generous system of perfect liberty adopted by Dr
Adam Smith and the French economists would be ill exchanged for any
system of restraint.

Mr Godwin would perhaps say that the whole system of barter and
exchange is a vile and iniquitous traffic. If you would essentially relieve the
poor man, you should take a part of his labour upon yourself, or give him

your money, without exacting so severe a return for it. In answer to the first
method proposed, it may be observed, that even if the rich could be
persuaded to assist the poor in this way, the value of the assistance would be
comparatively trifling. The rich, though they think themselves of great
importance, bear but a small proportion in point of numbers to the poor, and
would, therefore, relieve them but of a small part of their burdens by taking
a share. Were all those that are employed in the labours of luxuries added to
the number of those employed in producing necessaries, and could these
necessary labours be amicably divided among all, each man's share might
indeed be comparatively light; but desirable as such an amicable division
would undoubtedly be, I cannot conceive any practical principle according
to which it could take place. It has been shewn, that the spirit of
benevolence, guided by the strict impartial justice that Mr Godwin
describes, would, if vigorously acted upon, depress in want and misery the
whole human race. Let us examine what would be the consequence, if the
proprietor were to retain a decent share for himself, but to give the rest
away to the poor, without exacting a task from them in return. Not to
mention the idleness and the vice that such a proceeding, if general, would
probably create in the present state of society, and the great risk there would
be, of diminishing the produce of land, as well as the labours of luxury,
another objection yet remains.

Mr Godwin seems to have but little respect for practical principles; but I
own it appears to me, that he is a much greater benefactor to mankind, who
points out how an inferior good may be attained, than he who merely
expatiates on the deformity of the present state of society, and the beauty of
a different state, without pointing out a practical method, that might be
immediately applied, of accelerating our advances from the one, to the
other.

It has appeared that from the principle of population more will always be
in want than can be adequately supplied. The surplus of the rich man might
be sufficient for three, but four will be desirous to obtain it. He cannot make
this selection of three out of the four without conferring a great favour on
those that are the objects of his choice. These persons must consider
themselves as under a great obligation to him and as dependent upon him
for their support. The rich man would feel his power and the poor man his

dependence, and the evil effects of these two impressions on the human
heart are well known. Though I perfectly agree with Mr Godwin therefore
in the evil of hard labour, yet I still think it a less evil, and less calculated to
debase the human mind, than dependence, and every history of man that we
have ever read places in a strong point of view the danger to which that
mind is exposed which is entrusted with constant power.

In the present state of things, and particularly when labour is in request,
the man who does a day's work for me confers full as great an obligation
upon me as I do upon him. I possess what he wants, he possesses what I
want. We make an amicable exchange. The poor man walks erect in
conscious independence; and the mind of his employer is not vitiated by a
sense of power.

Three or four hundred years ago there was undoubtedly much less labour
in England, in proportion to the population, than at present, but there was
much more dependence, and we probably should not now enjoy our present
degree of civil liberty if the poor, by the introduction of manufactures, had
not been enabled to give something in exchange for the provisions of the
great Lords, instead of being dependent upon their bounty. Even the greatest
enemies of trade and manufactures, and I do not reckon myself a very
determined friend to them, must allow that when they were introduced into
England, liberty came in their train.

Nothing that has been said tends in the most remote degree to
undervalue the principle of benevolence. It is one of the noblest and most
godlike qualities of the human heart, generated, perhaps, slowly and
gradually from self-love, and afterwards intended to act as a general law,
whose kind office it should be, to soften the partial deformities, to correct
the asperities, and to smooth the wrinkles of its parent: and this seems to be
the analog of all nature. Perhaps there is no one general law of nature that
will not appear, to us at least, to produce partial evil; and we frequently
observe at the same time, some bountiful provision which, acting as another
general law, corrects the inequalities of the first.

The proper office of benevolence is to soften the partial evils arising
from self-love, but it can never be substituted in its place. If no man were to
allow himself to act till he had completely determined that the action he was

about to perform was more conducive than any other to the general good,
the most enlightened minds would hesitate in perplexity and amazement;
and the unenlightened would be continually committing the grossest
mistakes.

As Mr Godwin, therefore, has not laid down any practical principle
according to which the necessary labours of agriculture might be amicably
shared among the whole class of labourers, by general invectives against
employing the poor he appears to pursue an unattainable good through
much present evil. For if every man who employs the poor ought to be
considered as their enemy, and as adding to the weight of their oppressions,
and if the miser is for this reason to be preferred to the man who spends his
income, it follows that any number of men who now spend their incomes
might, to the advantage of society, be converted into misers. Suppose then
that a hundred thousand persons who now employ ten men each were to
lock up their wealth from general use, it is evident, that a million of
working men of different kinds would be completely thrown out of all
employment. The extensive misery that such an event would produce in the
present state of society Mr Godwin himself could hardly refuse to
acknowledge, and I question whether he might not find some difficulty in
proving that a conduct of this kind tended more than the conduct of those
who spend their incomes to 'place human beings in the condition in which
they ought to be placed.' But Mr Godwin says that the miser really locks up
nothing, that the point has not been rightly understood, and that the true
development and definition of the nature of wealth have not been applied to
illustrate it. Having defined therefore wealth, very justly, to be the
commodities raised and fostered by human labour, he observes that the
miser locks up neither corn, nor oxen, nor clothes, nor houses. Undoubtedly
he does not really lock up these articles, but he locks up the power of
producing them, which is virtually the same. These things are certainly used
and consumed by his contemporaries, as truly, and to as great an extent, as
if he were a beggar; but not to as great an extent as if he had employed his
wealth in turning up more land, in breeding more oxen, in employing more
tailors, and in building more houses. But supposing, for a moment, that the
conduct of the miser did not tend to check any really useful produce, how
are all those who are thrown out of employment to obtain patents which

they may shew in order to be awarded a proper share of the food and
raiment produced by the society? This is the unconquerable difficulty.

I am perfectly willing to concede to Mr Godwin that there is much more
labour in the world than is really necessary, and that, if the lower classes of
society could agree among themselves never to work more than six or seven
hours in the day, the commodities essential to human happiness might still
be produced in as great abundance as at present. But it is almost impossible
to conceive that such an agreement could be adhered to. From the principle
of population, some would necessarily be more in want than others. Those
that had large families would naturally be desirous of exchanging two hours
more of their labour for an ampler quantity of subsistence. How are they to
be prevented from making this exchange? it would be a violation of the first
and most sacred property that a man possesses to attempt, by positive
institutions, to interfere with his command over his own labour.

Till Mr Godwin, therefore, can point out some practical plan according
to which the necessary labour in a society might be equitably divided, his
invectives against labour, if they were attended to, would certainly produce
much present evil without approximating us to that state of cultivated
equality to which he looks forward as his polar star, and which, he seems to
think, should at present be our guide in determining the nature and tendency
of human actions. A mariner guided by such a polar star is in danger of
shipwreck.

Perhaps there is no possible way in which wealth could in general be
employed so beneficially to a state, and particularly to the lower orders of
it, as by improving and rendering productive that land which to a farmer
would not answer the expense of cultivation. Had Mr Godwin exerted his
energetic eloquence in painting the superior worth and usefulness of the
character who employed the poor in this way, to him who employed them in
narrow luxuries, every enlightened man must have applauded his efforts.
The increasing demand for agricultural labour must always tend to better
the condition of the poor; and if the accession of work be of this kind, so far
is it from being true that the poor would be obliged to work ten hours for
the same price that they before worked eight, that the very reverse would be

the fact; and a labourer might then support his wife and family as well by
the labour of six hours as he could before by the labour of eight.

The labour created by luxuries, though useful in distributing the produce
of the country, without vitiating the proprietor by power, or debasing the
labourer by dependence, has not, indeed, the same beneficial effects on the
state of the poor. A great accession of work from manufacturers, though it
may raise the price of labour even more than an increasing demand for
agricultural labour, yet, as in this case the quantity of food in the country
may not be proportionably increasing, the advantage to the poor will be but
temporary, as the price of provisions must necessarily rise in proportion to
the price of labour. Relative to this subject, I cannot avoid venturing a few
remarks on a part of Dr Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, speaking at the
same time with that diffidence which I ought certainly to feel in differing
from a person so justly celebrated in the political world.

CHAPTER 16
Probable error of Dr Adam Smith in representing every increase of the revenue
or stock of a society as an increase in the funds for the maintenance of labour—
Instances where an increase of wealth can have no tendency to better the
condition of the labouring poor—England has increased in riches without a
proportional increase in the funds for the maintenance of labour—The state of
the poor in China would not be improved by an increase of wealth from
manufactures.

The professed object of Dr Adam Smith's inquiry is the nature and
causes of the wealth of nations. There is another inquiry, however, perhaps
still more interesting, which he occasionally mixes with it; I mean an
inquiry into the causes which affect the happiness of nations or the
happiness and comfort of the lower orders of society, which is the most
numerous class in every nation. I am sufficiency aware of the near
connection of these two subjects, and that the causes which tend to increase
the wealth of a state tend also, generally speaking, to increase the happiness

of the lower classes of the people. But perhaps Dr Adam Smith has
considered these two inquiries as still more nearly connected than they
really are; at least, he has not stopped to take notice of those instances
where the wealth of a society may increase (according to his definition of
'wealth') without having any tendency to increase the comforts of the
labouring part of it. I do not mean to enter into a philosophical discussion of
what constitutes the proper happiness of man, but shall merely consider two
universally acknowledged ingredients, health, and the command of the
necessaries and conveniences of life.

Little or no doubt can exist that the comforts of the labouring poor
depend upon the increase of the funds destined for the maintenance of
labour, and will be very exactly in proportion to the rapidity of this increase.
The demand for labour which such increase would occasion, by creating a
competition in the market, must necessarily raise the value of labour, and,
till the additional number of hands required were reared, the increased
funds would be distributed to the same number of persons as before the
increase, and therefore every labourer would live comparatively at his ease.
But perhaps Dr Adam Smith errs in representing every increase of the
revenue or stock of a society as an increase of these funds. Such surplus
stock or revenue will, indeed, always be considered by the individual
possessing it as an additional fund from which he may maintain more
labour: but it will not be a real and effectual fund for the maintenance of an
additional number of labourers, unless the whole, or at least a great part of
this increase of the stock or revenue of the society, be convertible into a
proportional quantity of provisions; and it will not be so convertible where
the increase has arisen merely from the produce of labour, and not from the
produce of land. A distinction will in this case occur, between the number of
hands which the stock of the society could employ, and the number which
its territory can maintain.

To explain myself by an instance. Dr Adam Smith defines the wealth of a
nation to consist. In the annual produce of its land and labour. This
definition evidently includes manufactured produce, as well as the produce
of the land. Now supposing a nation for a course of years was to add what it
saved from its yearly revenue to its manufacturing capital solely, and not to
its capital employed upon land, it is evident that it might grow richer

according to the above definition, without a power of supporting a greater
number of labourers, and, therefore, without an increase in the real funds
for the maintenance of labour. There would, notwithstanding, be a demand
for labour from the power which each manufacturer would possess, or at
least think he possessed, of extending his old stock in trade or of setting up
fresh works. This demand would of course raise the price of labour, but if
the yearly stock of provisions in the country was not increasing, this rise
would soon turn out to be merely nominal, as the price of provisions must
necessarily rise with it. The demand for manufacturing labourers might,
indeed, entice many from agriculture and thus tend to diminish the annual
produce of the land, but we will suppose any effect of this kind to be
compensated by improvements in the instruments of agriculture, and the
quantity of provisions therefore to remain the same. Improvements in
manufacturing machinery would of course take place, and this
circumstance, added to the greater number of hands employed in
manufactures, would cause the annual produce of the labour of the country
to be upon the whole greatly increased. The wealth therefore of the country
would be increasing annually, according to the definition, and might not,
perhaps, be increasing very slowly.

The question is whether wealth, increasing in this way, has any tendency
to better the condition of the labouring poor. It is a self-evident proposition
that any general rise in the price of labour, the stock of provisions
remaining the same, can only be a nominal rise, as it must very shortly be
followed by a proportional rise in the price of provisions. The increase in
the price of labour, therefore, which we have supposed, would have little or
no effect in giving the labouring poor a greater command over the
necessaries and conveniences of life. In this respect they would be nearly in
the same state as before. In one other respect they would be in a worse state.
A greater proportion of them would be employed in manufactures, and
fewer, consequently, in agriculture. And this exchange of professions will
be allowed, I think, by all, to be very unfavourable in respect of health, one
essential ingredient of happiness, besides the greater uncertainty of
manufacturing labour, arising from the capricious taste of man, the
accidents of war, and other causes.

It may be said, perhaps, that such an instance as I have supposed could
not occur, because the rise in the price of provisions would immediately
turn some additional capital into the channel of agriculture. But this is an
event which may take place very slowly, as it should be remarked that a rise
in the price of labour had preceded the rise of provisions, and would,
therefore, impede the good effects upon agriculture, which the increased
value of the produce of the land might otherwise have occasioned.

It might also be said, that the additional capital of the nation would
enable it to import provisions sufficient for the maintenance of those whom
its stock could employ. A small country with a large navy, and great inland
accommodations for carriage, such as Holland, may, indeed, import and
distribute an effectual quantity of provisions; but the price of provisions
must be very high to make such an importation and distribution answer in
large countries less advantageously circumstanced in this respect.

An instance, accurately such as I have supposed, may not, perhaps, ever
have occurred, but I have little doubt that instances nearly approximating to
it may be found without any very laborious search. Indeed I am strongly
inclined to think that England herself, since the Revolution, affords a very
striking elucidation of the argument in question.

The commerce of this country, internal as well as external, has certainly
been rapidly advancing during the last century. The exchangeable value in
the market of Europe of the annual produce of its land and labour has,
without doubt, increased very considerably. But, upon examination, it will
be found that the increase has been chiefly in the produce of labour and not
in the produce of land, and therefore, though the wealth of the nation has
been advancing with a quick pace, the effectual funds for the maintenance
of labour have been increasing very slowly, and the result is such as might
be expected. The increasing wealth of the nation has had little or no
tendency to better the condition of the labouring poor. They have not, I
believe, a greater command of the necessaries and conveniences of life, and
a much greater proportion of them than at the period of the Revolution is
employed in manufactures and crowded together in close and unwholesome
rooms.

Could we believe the statement of Dr Price that the population of
England has decreased since the Revolution, it would even appear that the
effectual funds for the maintenance of labour had been declining during the
progress of wealth in other respects. For I conceive that it may be laid down
as a general rule that if the effectual funds for the maintenance of labour are
increasing, that is, if the territory can maintain as well as the stock employ a
greater number of labourers, this additional number will quickly spring up,
even in spite of such wars as Dr Price enumerates. And, consequently, if the
population of any country has been stationary, or declining, we may safely
infer, that, however it may have advanced in manufacturing wealth, its
effectual funds for the maintenance of labour cannot have increased.

It is difficult, however, to conceive that the population of England has
been declining since the Revolution, though every testimony concurs to
prove that its increase, if it has increased, has been very slow. In the
controversy which the question has occasioned, Dr Price undoubtedly
appears to be much more completely master of his subject, and to possess
more accurate information, than his opponents. Judging simply from this
controversy, I think one should say that Dr Price's point is nearer being
proved than Mr Howlett's. Truth, probably, lies between the two statements,
but this supposition makes the increase of population since the Revolution
to have been very slow in comparison with the increase of wealth.

That the produce of the land has been decreasing, or even that it has been
absolutely stationary during the last century, few will be disposed to
believe. The enclosure of commons and waste lands certainly tends to
increase the food of the country, but it has been asserted with confidence
that the enclosure of common fields has frequently had a contrary effect,
and that large tracts of land which formerly produced great quantities of
corn, by being converted into pasture both employ fewer hands and feed
fewer mouths than before their enclosure. It is, indeed, an acknowledged
truth, that pasture land produces a smaller quantity of human subsistence
than corn land of the same natural fertility, and could it be clearly
ascertained that from the increased demand for butchers' meat of the best
quality, and its increased price in consequence, a greater quantity of good
land has annually been employed in grazing, the diminution of human
subsistence, which this circumstance would occasion, might have

counterbalanced the advantages derived from the enclosure of waste lands,
and the general improvements in husbandry.

It scarcely need be remarked that the high price of butchers' meat at
present, and its low price formerly, were not caused by the scarcity in the
one case or the plenty in the other, but by the different expense sustained at
the different periods, in preparing cattle for the market. It is, however,
possible, that there might have been more cattle a hundred years ago in the
country than at present; but no doubt can be entertained, that there is much
more meat of a superior quality brought to market at present than ever there
was. When the price of butchers' meat was very low, cattle were reared
chiefly upon waste lands; and except for some of the principal markets,
were probably killed with but little other fatting. The veal that is sold so
cheap in some distant counties at present bears little other resemblance than
the name, to that which is bought in London. Formerly, the price of
butchers, meat would not pay for rearing, and scarcely for feeding, cattle on
land that would answer in tillage; but the present price will not only pay for
fatting cattle on the very best land, but will even allow of the rearing many,
on land that would bear good crops of corn. The same number of cattle, or
even the same weight of cattle at the different periods when killed, will
have consumed (if I may be allowed the expression) very different
quantities of human substance. A fatted beast may in some respects be
considered, in the language of the French economists, as an unproductive
labourer: he has added nothing to the value of the raw produce that he has
consumed. The present system of grating, undoubtedly tends more than the
former system to diminish the quantity of human subsistence in the country,
in proportion to the general fertility of the land.

I would not by any means be understood to say that the former system
either could or ought to have continued. The increasing price of butchers'
meat is a natural and inevitable consequence of the general progress of
cultivation; but I cannot help thinking, that the present great demand for
butchers' meat of the best quality, and the quantity of good land that is in
consequence annually employed to produce it, together with the great
number of horses at present kept for pleasure, are the chief causes that have
prevented the quantity of human food in the country from keeping pace
with the generally increased fertility of the soil; and a change of custom in

these respects would, I have little doubt, have a very sensible effect on the
quantity of subsistence in the country, and consequently on its population.

The employment of much of the most fertile land in grating, the
improvements in agricultural instruments, the increase of large farms, and
particularly the diminution of the number of cottages throughout the
kingdom, all concur to prove, that there are not probably so many persons
employed in agricultural labour now as at the period of the Revolution.
Whatever increase of population, therefore, has taken place, must be
employed almost wholly in manufactures, and it is well known that the
failure of some of these manufactures, merely from the caprice of fashion,
such as the adoption of muslins instead of silks, or of shoe-strings and
covered buttons, instead of buckles and metal buttons, combined with the
restraints in the market of labour arising from corporation and parish laws,
have frequently driven thousands on charity for support. The great increase
of the poor rates is, indeed, of itself a strong evidence that the poor have not
a greater command of the necessaries and conveniences of life, and if to the
consideration, that their condition in this respect is rather worse than better,
be added the circumstance, that a much greater proportion of them is
employed in large manufactories, unfavourable both to health and virtue, it
must be acknowledged, that the increase of wealth of late years has had no
tendency to increase the happiness of the labouring poor.

That every increase of the stock or revenue of a nation cannot be
considered as an increase of the real funds for the maintenance of labour
and, therefore, cannot have the same good effect upon the condition of the
poor, will appear in a strong light if the argument be applied to China.

Dr Adam Smith observes that China has probably long been as rich as
the nature of her laws and institutions will admit, but that with other laws
and institutions, and if foreign commerce were had in honour, she might
still be much richer. The question is, would such an increase of wealth be an
increase of the real funds for the maintenance of labour, and consequently
tend to place the lower classes of people in China in a state of greater
plenty?

It is evident, that if trade and foreign commerce were held in great
honour in China, from the plenty of labourers, and the cheapness of labour,

she might work up manufactures for foreign sale to an immense amount. It
is equally evident that from the great bulk of provisions and the amazing
extent of her inland territory she could not in return import such a quantity
as would be any sensible addition to the annual stock of subsistence in the
country. Her immense amount of manufactures, therefore, she would
exchange, chiefly, for luxuries collected from all parts of the world. At
present, it appears, that no labour whatever is spared in the production of
food. The country is rather over-people in proportion to what its stock can
employ, and labour is, therefore, so abundant, that no pains are taken to
abridge it. The consequence of this is, probably, the greatest production of
food that the soil can possibly afford, for it will be generally observed, that
processes for abridging labour, though they may enable a farmer to bring a
certain quantity of grain cheaper to market, tend rather to diminish than
increase the whole produce; and in agriculture, therefore, may, in some
respects, be considered rather as private than public advantages.

An immense capital could not be employed in China in preparing
manufactures for foreign trade without taking off so many labourers from
agriculture as to alter this state of things, and in some degree to diminish the
produce of the country. The demand for manufacturing labourers would
naturally raise the price of labour, but as the quantity of subsistence would
not be increased, the price of provisions would keep pace with it, or even
more than keep pace with it if the quantity of provisions were really
decreasing. The country would be evidently advancing in wealth, the
exchangeable value of the annual produce of its land and labour would be
annually augmented, yet the real funds for the maintenance of labour would
be stationary, or even declining, and, consequently, the increasing wealth of
the nation would rather tend to depress than to raise the condition of the
poor. With regard to the command over the necessaries and comforts of life,
they would be in the same or rather worse state than before; and a great part
of them would have exchanged the healthy labours of agriculture for the
unhealthy occupations of manufacturing industry.

The argument, perhaps, appears clearer when applied to China, because
it is generally allowed that the wealth of China has been long stationary.
With regard to any other country it might be always a matter of dispute at
which of the two periods, compared, wealth was increasing the fastest, as it

is upon the rapidity of the increase of wealth at any particular period that Dr
Adam Smith says the condition of the poor depends. It is evident, however,
that two nations might increase exactly with the same rapidity in the
exchangeable value of the annual produce of their land and labour, yet if
one had applied itself chiefly to agriculture, and the other chiefly to
commerce, the funds for the maintenance of labour, and consequently the
effect of the increase of wealth in each nation, would be extremely
different. In that which had applied itself chiefly to agriculture, the poor
would live in great plenty, and population would rapidly increase. In that
which had applied itself chiefly to commerce, the poor would be
comparatively but little benefited and consequently population would
increase slowly.

CHAPTER 17
Question of the proper definition of the wealth of a state—Reason given by the
French economists for considering all manufacturers as unproductive labourers,
not the true reason—The labour of artificers and manufacturers sufficiently
productive to individuals, though not to the state—A remarkable passage in Dr
Price's two volumes of Observations—Error of Dr Price in attributing the
happiness and rapid population of America, chiefly, to its peculiar state of
civilization—No advantage can be expected from shutting our eyes to the
difficulties in the way to the improvement of society.

A question seems naturally to arise here whether the exchangeable value
of the annual produce of the land and labour be the proper definition of the
wealth of a country, or whether the gross produce of the land, according to
the French economists, may not be a more accurate definition. Certain it is
that every increase of wealth, according to the definition of the economists,
will be an increase of the funds for the maintenance of labour, and
consequently will always tend to ameliorate the condition of the labouring
poor, though an increase of wealth, according to Dr Adam Smith's
definition, will by no means invariably have the same tendency. And yet it
may not follow from this consideration that Dr Adam Smith's definition is

not just. It seems in many respects improper to exclude the clothing and
lodging of a whole people from any part of their revenue. Much of it may,
indeed, be of very trivial and unimportant value in comparison with the
food of the country, yet still it may be fairly considered as a part of its
revenue; and, therefore, the only point in which I should differ from Dr
Adam Smith is where he seems to consider every increase of the revenue or
stock of a society as an increase of the funds for the maintenance of labour,
and consequently as tending always to ameliorate the condition of the poor.

The fine silks and cottons, the laces, and other ornamental luxuries of a
rich country, may contribute very considerably to augment the
exchangeable value of its annual produce; yet they contribute but in a very
small degree to augment the mass of happiness in the society, and it appears
to me that it is with some view to the real utility of the produce that we
ought to estimate the productiveness or unproductiveness of different sorts
of labour. The French economists consider all labour employed in
manufactures as unproductive. Comparing it with the labour employed
upon land, I should be perfectly disposed to agree with them, but not
exactly for the reasons which they give. They say that labour employed
upon land is productive because the produce, over and above completely
paying the labourer and the farmer, affords a clear rent to the landlord, and
that the labour employed upon a piece of lace is unproductive because it
merely replaces the provisions that the workman had consumed, and the
stock of his employer, without affording any clear rent whatever. But
supposing the value of the wrought lace to be such as that, besides paying in
the most complete manner the workman and his employer, it could afford a
clear rent to a third person, it appears to me that, in comparison with the
labour employed upon land, it would be still as unproductive as ever.
Though, according to the reasoning used by the French economists, the man
employed in the manufacture of lace would, in this case, seem to be a
productive labourer. Yet according to their definition of the wealth of a
state, he ought not to be considered in that light. He will have added
nothing to the gross produce of the land: he has consumed a portion of this
gross produce, and has left a bit of lace in return; and though he may sell
this bit of lace for three times the quantity of provisions that he consumed
whilst he was making it, and thus be a very productive labourer with regard
to himself, yet he cannot be considered as having added by his labour to any

essential part of the riches of the state. The clear rent, therefore, that a
certain produce can afford, after paying the expenses of procuring it, does
not appear to be the sole criterion, by which to judge of the productiveness
or unproductiveness to a state of any particular species of labour.

Suppose that two hundred thousand men, who are now employed in
producing manufactures that only tend to gratify the vanity of a few rich
people, were to be employed upon some barren and uncultivated lands, and
to produce only half the quantity of food that they themselves consumed;
they would be still more productive labourers with regard to the state than
they were before, though their labour, so far from affording a rent to a third
person, would but half replace the provisions used in obtaining the produce.
In their former employment they consumed a certain portion of the food of
the country and left in return some silks and laces. In their latter
employment they consumed the same quantity of food and left in return
provision for a hundred thousand men. There can be little doubt which of
the two legacies would be the most really beneficial to the country, and it
will, I think, be allowed that the wealth which supported the two hundred
thousand men while they were producing silks and laces would have been
more usefully employed in supporting them while they were producing the
additional quantity of food.

A capital employed upon land may be unproductive to the individual that
employs it and yet be highly productive to the society. A capital employed
in trade, on the contrary, may be highly productive to the individual, and yet
be almost totally unproductive to the society: and this is the reason why I
should call manufacturing labour unproductive, in comparison of that which
is employed in agriculture, and not for the reason given by the French
economists. It is, indeed, almost impossible to see the great fortunes that are
made in trade, and the liberality with which so many merchants live, and
yet agree in the statement of the economists, that manufacturers can only
grow rich by depriving themselves of the funds destined for their support.
In many branches of trade the profits are so great as would allow of a clear
rent to a third person; but as there is no third person in the case, and as all
the profits centre in the master manufacturer, or merchant, he seems to have
a fair chance of growing rich, without much privation; and we consequently

see large fortunes acquired in trade by persons who have not been remarked
for their parsimony.

Daily experience proves that the labour employed in trade and
manufactures is sufficiently productive to individuals, but it certainly is not
productive in the same degree to the state. Every accession to the food of a
country tends to the immediate benefit of the whole society; but the
fortunes made in trade tend but in a remote and uncertain manner to the
same end, and in some respects have even a contrary tendency. The home
trade of consumption is by far the most important trade of every nation.
China is the richest country in the world, without any other. Putting then,
for a moment, foreign trade out of the question, the man who, by an
ingenious manufacture, obtains a double portion out of the old stock of
provisions, will certainly not to be so useful to the state as the man who, by
his labour, adds a single share to the former stock. The consumable
commodities of silks, laces, trinkets, and expensive furniture, are
undoubtedly a part of the revenue of the society; but they are the revenue
only of the rich, and not of the society in general. An increase in this part of
the revenue of a state, cannot, therefore, be considered of the same
importance as an increase of food, which forms the principal revenue of the
great mass of the people.

Foreign commerce adds to the wealth of a state, according to Dr Adam
Smith's definition, though not according to the definition of the economists.
Its principal use, and the reason, probably, that it has in general been held in
such high estimation is that it adds greatly to the external power of a nation
or to its power of commanding the labour of other countries; but it will be
found, upon a near examination, to contribute but little to the increase of the
internal funds for the maintenance of labour, and consequently but little to
the happiness of the greatest part of society. In the natural progress of a
state towards riches, manufactures, and foreign commerce would follow, in
their order, the high cultivation of the soil. In Europe, this natural order of
things has been inverted, and the soil has been cultivated from the
redundancy of manufacturing capital, instead of manufactures rising from
the redundancy of capital employed upon land. The superior encouragement
that has been given to the industry of the towns, and the consequent higher
price that is paid for the labour of artificers than for the labour of those

employed in husbandry, are probably the reasons why so much soil in
Europe remains uncultivated. Had a different policy been pursued
throughout Europe, it might undoubtedly have been much more populous
than at present, and yet not be more incumbered by its population.

I cannot quit this curious subject of the difficulty arising from
population, a subject that appears to me to deserve a minute investigation
and able discussion much beyond my power to give it, without taking notice
of an extraordinary passage in Dr Price's two volumes of Observations.
Having given some tables on the probabilities of life, in towns and in the
country, he says (Vol. II, p. 243):

From this comparison, it appears with how much truth great cities have
been called the graves of mankind. It must also convince all who consider
it, that according to the observation, at the end of the fourth essay, in the
former volume, it is by no means strictly proper to consider our diseases as
the original intention of nature. They are, without doubt, in general our own
creation. Were there a country where the inhabitants led lives entirely
natural and virtuous, few of them would die without measuring out the
whole period of present existence allotted to them; pain and distemper
would be unknown among them, and death would come upon them like a
sleep, in consequence of no other cause than gradual and unavoidable
decay.

I own that I felt myself obliged to draw a very opposite conclusion from
the facts advanced in Dr Price's two volumes. I had for some time been
aware that population and food increased in different ratios, and a vague
opinion had been floating in my mind that they could only be kept equal by
some species of misery or vice, but the perusal of Dr Price's two volumes of
Observations, after that opinion had been conceived, raised it at once to
conviction. With so many facts in his view to prove the extraordinary
rapidity with which population increases when unchecked, and with such a
body of evidence before him to elucidate even the manner by which the
general laws of nature repress a redundant population, it is perfectly
inconceivable to me how he could write the passage that I have quoted. He
was a strenuous advocate for early marriages, as the best preservative
against vicious manners. He had no fanciful conceptions about the

extinction of the passion between the sexes, like Mr Godwin, nor did he
ever think of eluding the difficulty in the ways hinted at by Mr Condorcet.
He frequently talks of giving the prolifick powers of nature room to exert
themselves. Yet with these ideas, that his understanding could escape from
the obvious and necessary inference that an unchecked population would
increase, beyond comparison, faster than the earth, by the best directed
exertions of man, could produce food for its support, appears to me as
astonishing as if he had resisted the conclusion of one of the plainest
propositions of Euclid.

Dr Price, speaking of the different stages of the civilized state, says, 'The
first, or simple stages of civilization, are those which favour most the
increase and the happiness of mankind.' He then instances the American
colonies, as being at that time in the first and happiest of the states that he
had described, and as affording a very striking proof of the effects of the
different stages of civilization on population. But he does not seem to be
aware that the happiness of the Americans depended much less upon their
peculiar degree of civilization than upon the peculiarity of their situation, as
new colonies, upon their having a great plenty of fertile uncultivated land.
In parts of Norway, Denmark, or Sweden, or in this country, two or three
hundred years ago, he might have found perhaps nearly the same degree of
civilization, but by no means the same happiness or the same increase of
population. He quotes himself a statute of Henry the Eighth, complaining of
the decay of tillage, and the enhanced price of provisions, 'whereby a
marvellous number of people were rendered incapable of maintaining
themselves and families.' The superior degree of civil liberty which
prevailed in America contributed, without doubt, its share to promote the
industry, happiness, and population of these states, but even civil liberty, all
powerful as it is, will not create fresh land. The Americans may be said,
perhaps, to enjoy a greater degree of civil liberty, now they are an
independent people, than while they were in subjection in England, but we
may be perfectly sure that population will not long continue to increase
with the same rapidity as it did then.

A person who contemplated the happy state of the lower classes of
people in America twenty years ago would naturally wish to retain them for
ever in that state, and might think, perhaps, that by preventing the

introduction of manufactures and luxury he might effect his purpose, but he
might as reasonably expect to prevent a wife or mistress from growing old
by never exposing her to the sun or air. The situation of new colonies, well
governed, is a bloom of youth that no efforts can arrest. There are, indeed,
many modes of treatment in the political, as well as animal, body, that
contribute to accelerate or retard the approaches of age, but there can be no
chance of success, in any mode that could be devised, for keeping either of
them in perpetual youth. By encouraging the industry of the towns more
than the industry of the country, Europe may be said, perhaps, to have
brought on a premature old age. A different policy in this respect would
infuse fresh life and vigour into every state. While from the law of
primogeniture, and other European customs, land bears a monopoly price, a
capital can never be employed in it with much advantage to the individual;
and, therefore, it is not probable that the soil should be properly cultivated.
And, though in every civilized state a class of proprietors and a class of
labourers must exist, yet one permanent advantage would always result
from a nearer equalization of property. The greater the number of
proprietors, the smaller must be the number of labourers: a greater part of
society would be in the happy state of possessing property: and a smaller
part in the unhappy state of possessing no other property than their labour.
But the best directed exertions, though they may alleviate, can never
remove the pressure of want, and it will be difficult for any person who
contemplates the genuine situation of man on earth, and the general laws of
nature, to suppose it possible that any, the most enlightened, efforts could
place mankind in a state where 'few would die without measuring out the
whole period of present existence allotted to them; where pain and
distemper would be unknown among them; and death would come upon
them like a sleep, in consequence of no other cause than gradual and
unavoidable decay.'

It is, undoubtedly, a most disheartening reflection that the great obstacle
in the way to any extraordinary improvement in society is of a nature that
we can never hope to overcome. The perpetual tendency in the race of man
to increase beyond the means of subsistence is one of the general laws of
animated nature which we can have no reason to expect will change. Yet,
discouraging as the contemplation of this difficulty must be to those whose
exertions are laudably directed to the improvement of the human species, it

is evident that no possible good can arise from any endeavours to slur it
over or keep it in the background. On the contrary, the most baleful
mischiefs may be expected from the unmanly conduct of not daring to face
truth because it is unpleasing. Independently of what relates to this great
obstacle, sufficient yet remains to be done for mankind to animate us to the
most unremitted exertion. But if we proceed without a thorough knowledge
and accurate comprehension of the nature, extent, and magnitude of the
difficulties we have to encounter, or if we unwisely direct our efforts
towards an object in which we cannot hope for success, we shall not only
exhaust our strength in fruitless exertions and remain at as great a distance
as ever from the summit of our wishes, but we shall be perpetually crushed
by the recoil of this rock of Sisyphus.

CHAPTER 18
The constant pressure of distress on man, from the principle of population, seems
to direct our hopes to the future—State of trial inconsistent with our ideas of the
foreknowledge of God—The world, probably, a mighty process for awakening
matter into mind—Theory of the formation of mind—Excitements from the
wants of the body—Excitements from the operation of general laws—
Excitements from the difficulties of life arising from the principle of population.

The view of human life which results from the contemplation of the
constant pressure of distress on man from the difficulty of subsistence, by
shewing the little expectation that he can reasonably entertain of
perfectibility on earth, seems strongly to point his hopes to the future. And
the temptations to which he must necessarily be exposed, from the
operation of those laws of nature which we have been examining, would
seem to represent the world in the light in which it has been frequently
considered, as a state of trial and school of virtue preparatory to a superior
state of happiness. But I hope I shall be pardoned if I attempt to give a view
in some degree different of the situation of man on earth, which appears to
me to be more consistent with the various phenomena of nature which we
observe around us and more consonant to our ideas of the power, goodness,
and foreknowledge of the Deity.

It cannot be considered as an unimproving exercise of the human mind
to endeavour to 'vindicate the ways of God to man' if we proceed with a
proper distrust of our own understandings and a just sense of our
insufficiency to comprehend the reason of all we see, if we hail every ray of
light with gratitude, and, when no light appears, think that the darkness is
from within and not from without, and bow with humble deference to the
supreme wisdom of him whose 'thoughts are above our thoughts' 'as the
heavens are high above the earth.'

In all our feeble attempts, however, to 'find out the Almighty to
perfection', it seems absolutely necessary that we should reason from nature
up to nature's God and not presume to reason from God to nature. The
moment we allow ourselves to ask why some things are not otherwise,
instead of endeavouring to account for them as they are, we shall never
know where to stop, we shall be led into the grossest and most childish
absurdities, all progress in the knowledge of the ways of Providence must
necessarily be at an end, and the study will even cease to be an improving
exercise of the human mind. Infinite power is so vast and incomprehensible
an idea that the mind of man must necessarily be bewildered in the
contemplation of it. With the crude and puerile conceptions which we
sometimes form of this attribute of the Deity, we might imagine that God
could call into being myriads and myriads of existences, all free from pain
and imperfection, all eminent in goodness and wisdom, all capable of the
highest enjoyments, and unnumbered as the points throughout infinite
space. But when from these vain and extravagant dreams of fancy, we turn
our eyes to the book of nature, where alone we can read God as he is, we
see a constant succession of sentient beings, rising apparently from so many
specks of matter, going through a long and sometimes painful process in
this world, but many of them attaining, ere the termination of it, such high
qualities and powers as seem to indicate their fitness for some superior
state. Ought we not then to correct our crude and puerile ideas of infinite
Power from the contemplation of what we actually see existing? Can we
judge of the Creator but from his creation? And, unless we wish to exalt the
power of God at the expense of his goodness, ought we not to conclude that
even to the great Creator, almighty as he is, a certain process may be
necessary, a certain time (or at least what appears to us as time) may be
requisite, in order to form beings with those exalted qualities of mind which
will fit them for his high purposes?

A state of trial seems to imply a previously formed existence that does
not agree with the appearance of man in infancy and indicates something
like suspicion and want of foreknowledge, inconsistent with those ideas
which we wish to cherish of the Supreme Being. I should be inclined,
therefore, as I have hinted before, to consider the world and this life as the
mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation
of mind, a process necessary to awaken inert, chaotic matter into spirit, to

sublimate the dust of the earth into soul, to elicit an ethereal spark from the
clod of clay. And in this view of the subject, the various impressions and
excitements which man receives through life may be considered as the
forming hand of his Creator, acting by general laws, and awakening his
sluggish existence, by the animating touches of the Divinity, into a capacity
of superior enjoyment. The original sin of man is the torpor and corruption
of the chaotic matter in which he may be said to be born.

It could answer no good purpose to enter into the question whether mind
be a distinct substance from matter, or only a finer form of it. The question
is, perhaps, after all, a question merely of words. Mind is as essentially
mind, whether formed from matter or any other substance. We know from
experience that soul and body are most intimately united, and every
appearance seems to indicate that they grow from infancy together. It would
be a supposition attended with very little probability to believe that a
complete and full formed spirit existed in every infant, but that it was
clogged and impeded in its operations during the first twenty years of life
by the weakness, or hebetude, of the organs in which it was enclosed. As we
shall all be disposed to agree that God is the creator of mind as well as of
body, and as they both seem to be forming and unfolding themselves at the
same time, it cannot appear inconsistent either with reason or revelation, if
it appear to be consistent with phenomena of nature, to suppose that God is
constantly occupied in forming mind out of matter and that the various
impressions that man receives through life is the process for that purpose.
The employment is surely worthy of the highest attributes of the Deity.

This view of the state of man on earth will not seem to be unattended
with probability, if, judging from the little experience we have of the nature
of mind, it shall appear upon investigation that the phenomena around us,
and the various events of human life, seem peculiarly calculated to promote
this great end, and especially if, upon this supposition, we can account,
even to our own narrow understandings, for many of those roughnesses and
inequalities in life which querulous man too frequently makes the subject of
his complaint against the God of nature.

The first great awakeners of the mind seem to be the wants of the body.
(It was my intention to have entered at some length into this subject as a

kind of second part to the Essay. A long interruption, from particular
business, has obliged me to lay aside this intention, at least for the present. I
shall now, therefore, only give a sketch of a few of the leading
circumstances that appear to me to favour the general supposition that I
have advanced.) They are the first stimulants that rouse the brain of infant
man into sentient activity, and such seems to be the sluggishness of original
matter that unless by a peculiar course of excitements other wants, equally
powerful, are generated, these stimulants seem, even afterwards, to be
necessary to continue that activity which they first awakened. The savage
would slumber for ever under his tree unless he were roused from his torpor
by the cravings of hunger or the pinchings of cold, and the exertions that he
makes to avoid these evils, by procuring food, and building himself a
covering, are the exercises which form and keep in motion his faculties,
which otherwise would sink into listless inactivity. From all that experience
has taught us concerning the structure of the human mind, if those
stimulants to exertion which arise from the wants of the body were removed
from the mass of mankind, we have much more reason to think that they
would be sunk to the level of brutes, from a deficiency of excitements, than
that they would be raised to the rank of philosophers by the possession of
leisure. In those countries where nature is the most redundant in
spontaneous produce the inhabitants will not be found the most remarkable
for acuteness of intellect. Necessity has been with great truth called the
mother of invention. Some of the noblest exertions of the human mind have
been set in motion by the necessity of satisfying the wants of the body.
Want has not unfrequently given wings to the imagination of the poet,
pointed the flowing periods of the historian, and added acuteness to the
researches of the philosopher, and though there are undoubtedly many
minds at present so far improved by the various excitements of knowledge,
or of social sympathy, that they would not relapse into listlessness if their
bodily stimulants were removed, yet it can scarcely be doubted that these
stimulants could not be withdrawn from the mass of mankind without
producing a general and fatal torpor, destructive of all the germs of future
improvement.

Locke, if I recollect, says that the endeavour to avoid pain rather than the
pursuit of pleasure is the great stimulus to action in life: and that in looking
to any particular pleasure, we shall not be roused into action in order to

obtain it, till the contemplation of it has continued so long as to amount to a
sensation of pain or uneasiness under the absence of it. To avoid evil and to
pursue good seem to be the great duty and business of man, and this world
appears to be peculiarly calculated to afford opportunity of the most
unremitted exertion of this kind, and it is by this exertion, by these
stimulants, that mind is formed. If Locke's idea be just, and there is great
reason to think that it is, evil seems to be necessary to create exertion, and
exertion seems evidently necessary to create mind.

The necessity of food for the support of life gives rise, probably, to a
greater quantity of exertion than any other want, bodily or mental. The
Supreme Being has ordained that the earth shall not produce good in great
quantities till much preparatory labour and ingenuity has been exercised
upon its surface. There is no conceivable connection to our
comprehensions, between the seed and the plant or tree that rises from it.
The Supreme Creator might, undoubtedly, raise up plants of all kinds, for
the use of his creatures, without the assistance of those little bits of matter,
which we call seed, or even without the assisting labour and attention of
man. The processes of ploughing and clearing the ground, of collecting and
sowing seeds, are not surely for the assistance of God in his creation, but
are made previously necessary to the enjoyment of the blessings of life, in
order to rouse man into action, and form his mind to reason.

To furnish the most unremitted excitements of this kind, and to urge man
to further the gracious designs of Providence by the full cultivation of the
earth, it has been ordained that population should increase much faster than
food. This general law (as it has appeared in the former parts of this Essay)
undoubtedly produces much partial evil, but a little reflection may, perhaps,
satisfy us, that it produces a great overbalance of good. Strong excitements
seem necessary to create exertion, and to direct this exertion, and form the
reasoning faculty, it seems absolutely necessary, that the Supreme Being
should act always according to general laws. The constancy of the laws of
nature, or the certainty with which we may expect the same effects from the
same causes, is the foundation of the faculty of reason. If in the ordinary
course of things, the finger of God were frequently visible, or to speak more
correctly, if God were frequently to change his purpose (for the finger of
God is, indeed, visible in every blade of grass that we see), a general and

fatal torpor of the human faculties would probably ensue; even the bodily
wants of mankind would cease to stimulate them to exertion, could they not
reasonably expect that if their efforts were well directed they would be
crowned with success. The constancy of the laws of nature is the foundation
of the industry and foresight of the husbandman, the indefatigable ingenuity
of the artificer, the skilful researches of the physician and anatomist, and the
watchful observation and patient investigation of the natural philosopher. To
this constancy we owe all the greatest and noblest efforts of intellect. To
this constancy we owe the immortal mind of a Newton.

As the reasons, therefore, for the constancy of the laws of nature seem,
even to our understandings, obvious and striking; if we return to the
principle of population and consider man as he really is, inert, sluggish, and
averse from labour, unless compelled by necessity (and it is surely the
height of folly to talk of man, according to our crude fancies of what he
might be), we may pronounce with certainty that the world would not have
been peopled, but for the superiority of the power of population to the
means of subsistence. Strong and constantly operative as this stimulus is on
man to urge him to the cultivation of the earth, if we still see that cultivation
proceeds very slowly, we may fairly conclude that a less stimulus would
have been insufficient. Even under the operation of this constant
excitement, savages will inhabit countries of the greatest natural fertility for
a long period before they betake themselves to pasturage or agriculture.
Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man
might never have emerged from the savage state. But supposing the earth
once well peopled, an Alexander, a Julius Caesar, a Tamberlane, or a bloody
revolution might irrecoverably thin the human race, and defeat the great
designs of the Creator. The ravages of a contagious disorder would be felt
for ages; and an earthquake might unpeople a region for ever. The principle,
according to which population increases, prevents the vices of mankind, or
the accidents of nature, the partial evils arising from general laws, from
obstructing the high purpose of the creation. It keeps the inhabitants of the
earth always fully up to the level of the means of subsistence; and is
constantly acting upon man as a powerful stimulus, urging him to the
further cultivation of the earth, and to enable it, consequently, to support a
more extended population. But it is impossible that this law can operate,
and produce the effects apparently intended by the Supreme Being, without

occasioning partial evil. Unless the principle of population were to be
altered according to the circumstances of each separate country (which
would not only be contrary to our universal experience, with regard to the
laws of nature, but would contradict even our own reason, which sees the
absolute necessity of general laws for the formation of intellect), it is
evident that the same principle which, seconded by industry, will people a
fertile region in a few years must produce distress in countries that have
been long inhabited.

It seems, however, every way probable that even the acknowledged
difficulties occasioned by the law of population tend rather to promote than
impede the general purpose of Providence. They excite universal exertion
and contribute to that infinite variety of situations, and consequently of
impressions, which seems upon the whole favourable to the growth of
mind. It is probable, that too great or too little excitement, extreme poverty,
or too great riches may be alike unfavourable in this respect. The middle
regions of society seem to be best suited to intellectual improvement, but it
is contrary to the analogy of all nature to expect that the whole of society
can be a middle region. The temperate zones of the earth seem to be the
most favourable to the mental and corporal energies of man, but all cannot
be temperate zones. A world, warmed and enlightened but by one sun, must
from the laws of matter have some parts chilled by perpetual frosts and
others scorched by perpetual heats. Every piece of matter lying on a surface
must have an upper and an under side, all the particles cannot be in the
middle. The most valuable parts of an oak, to a timber merchant, are not
either the roots or the branches, but these are absolutely necessary to the
existence of the middle part, or stem, which is the object in request. The
timber merchant could not possibly expect to make an oak grow without
roots or branches, but if he could find out a mode of cultivation which
would cause more of the substance to go to stem, and less to root and
branch, he would be right to exert himself in bringing such a system into
general use.

In the same manner, though we cannot possibly expect to exclude riches
and poverty from society, yet if we could find out a mode of government by
which the numbers in the extreme regions would be lessened and the
numbers in the middle regions increased, it would be undoubtedly our duty

to adopt it. It is not, however, improbable that as in the oak, the roots and
branches could not be diminished very greatly without weakening the
vigorous circulation of the sap in the stem, so in society the extreme parts
could not be diminished beyond a certain degree without lessening that
animated exertion throughout the middle parts, which is the very cause that
they are the most favourable to the growth of intellect. If no man could
hope to rise or fear to fall, in society, if industry did not bring with it its
reward and idleness its punishment, the middle parts would not certainly be
what they now are. In reasoning upon this subject, it is evident that we
ought to consider chiefly the mass of mankind and not individual instances.
There are undoubtedly many minds, and there ought to be many, according
to the chances out of so great a mass, that, having been vivified early by a
peculiar course of excitements, would not need the constant action of
narrow motives to continue them in activity. But if we were to review the
various useful discoveries, the valuable writings, and other laudable
exertions of mankind, I believe we should find that more were to be
attributed to the narrow motives that operate upon the many than to the
apparently more enlarged motives that operate upon the few.

Leisure is, without doubt, highly valuable to man, but taking man as he
is, the probability seems to be that in the greater number of instances it will
produce evil rather than good. It has been not infrequently remarked that
talents are more common among younger brothers than among elder
brothers, but it can scarcely be imagined that younger brothers are, upon an
average, born with a greater original susceptibility of parts. The difference,
if there really is any observable difference, can only arise from their
different situations. Exertion and activity are in general absolutely
necessary in one case and are only optional in the other.

That the difficulties of life contribute to generate talents, every day's
experience must convince us. The exertions that men find it necessary to
make, in order to support themselves or families, frequently awaken
faculties that might otherwise have lain for ever dormant, and it has been
commonly remarked that new and extraordinary situations generally create
minds adequate to grapple with the difficulties in which they are involved.

CHAPTER 19
The sorrows of life necessary to soften and humanize the heart—The excitement
of social sympathy often produce characters of a higher order than the mere
possessors of talents—Moral evil probably necessary to the production of moral
excellence—Excitements from intellectual wants continually kept up by the
infinite variety of nature, and the obscurity that involves metaphysical subjects—
The difficulties in revelation to be accounted for upon this principle—The degree
of evidence which the scriptures contain, probably, best suited to the
improvements of the human faculties, and the moral amelioration of mankind—
The idea that mind is created by excitements seems to account for the existence
of natural and moral evil.

The sorrows and distresses of life form another class of excitements,
which seem to be necessary, by a peculiar train of impressions, to soften
and humanize the heart, to awaken social sympathy, to generate all the
Christian virtues, and to afford scope for the ample exertion of benevolence.
The general tendency of an uniform course of prosperity is rather to
degrade than exalt the character. The heart that has never known sorrow
itself will seldom be feelingly alive to the pains and pleasures, the wants
and wishes, of its fellow beings. It will seldom be overflowing with that
warmth of brotherly love, those kind and amiable affections, which dignify
the human character even more than the possession of the highest talents.
Talents, indeed, though undoubtedly a very prominent and fine feature of
mind, can by no means be considered as constituting the whole of it. There
are many minds which have not been exposed to those excitements that
usually form talents, that have yet been vivified to a high degree by the
excitements of social sympathy. In every rank of life, in the lowest as
frequently as in the highest, characters are to be found overflowing with the
milk of human kindness, breathing love towards God and man, and, though
without those peculiar powers of mind called talents, evidently holding a
higher rank in the scale of beings than many who possess them. Evangelical
charity, meekness, piety, and all that class of virtues distinguished
particularly by the name of Christian virtues do not seem necessarily to

include abilities; yet a soul possessed of these amiable qualities, a soul
awakened and vivified by these delightful sympathies, seems to hold a
nearer commerce with the skies than mere acuteness of intellect.

The greatest talents have been frequently misapplied and have produced
evil proportionate to the extent of their powers. Both reason and revelation
seem to assure us that such minds will be condemned to eternal death, but
while on earth, these vicious instruments performed their part in the great
mass of impressions, by the disgust and abhorrence which they excited. It
seems highly probable that moral evil is absolutely necessary to the
production of moral excellence. A being with only good placed in view may
be justly said to be impelled by a blind necessity. The pursuit of good in this
case can be no indication of virtuous propensities. It might be said, perhaps,
that infinite Wisdom cannot want such an indication as outward action, but
would foreknow with certainly whether the being would choose good or
evil. This might be a plausible argument against a state of trial, but will not
hold against the supposition that mind in this world is in a state of
formation. Upon this idea, the being that has seen moral evil and has felt
disapprobation and disgust at it is essentially different from the being that
has seen only good. They are pieces of clay that have received distinct
impressions: they must, therefore, necessarily be in different shapes; or,
even if we allow them both to have the same lovely form of virtue, it must
be acknowledged that one has undergone the further process, necessary to
give firmness and durability to its substance, while the other is still exposed
to injury, and liable to be broken by every accidental impulse. An ardent
love and admiration of virtue seems to imply the existence of something
opposite to it, and it seems highly probable that the same beauty of form
and substance, the same perfection of character, could not be generated
without the impressions of disapprobation which arise from the spectacle of
moral evil.

When the mind has been awakened into activity by the passions, and the
wants of the body, intellectual wants arise; and the desire of knowledge, and
the impatience under ignorance, form a new and important class of
excitements. Every part of nature seems peculiarly calculated to furnish
stimulants to mental exertion of this kind, and to offer inexhaustible food
for the most unremitted inquiry. Our mortal Bard says of Cleopatra:

Custom cannot stale
Her infinite variety.

The expression, when applied to any one object, may be considered as a
poetical amplification, but it is accurately true when applied to nature.
Infinite variety seems, indeed, eminently her characteristic feature. The
shades that are here and there blended in the picture give spirit, life, and
prominence to her exuberant beauties, and those roughnesses and
inequalities, those inferior parts that support the superior, though they
sometimes offend the fastidious microscopic eye of short-sighted man,
contribute to the symmetry, grace, and fair proportion of the whole.

The infinite variety of the forms and operations of nature, besides
tending immediately to awaken and improve the mind by the variety of
impressions that it creates, opens other fertile sources of improvement by
offering so wide and extensive a field for investigation and research.
Uniform, undiversified perfection could not possess the same awakening
powers. When we endeavour then to contemplate the system of the
universe, when we think of the stars as the suns of other systems scattered
throughout infinite space, when we reflect that we do not probably see a
millionth part of those bright orbs that are beaming light and life to
unnumbered worlds, when our minds, unable to grasp the immeasurable
conception, sink, lost and confounded, in admiration at the mighty
incomprehensible power of the Creator, let us not querulously complain that
all climates are not equally genial, that perpetual spring does not reign
throughout the year, that God's creatures do not possess the same
advantages, that clouds and tempests sometimes darken the natural world
and vice and misery the moral world, and that all the works of the creation
are not formed with equal perfection. Both reason and experience seem to
indicate to us that the infinite variety of nature (and variety cannot exist
without inferior parts, or apparent blemishes) is admirably adapted to
further the high purpose of the creation and to produce the greatest possible
quantity of good.

The obscurity that involves all metaphysical subjects appears to me, in
the same manner, peculiarly calculated to add to that class of excitements
which arise from the thirst of knowledge. It is probable that man, while on
earth, will never be able to attain complete satisfaction on these subjects;

but this is by no means a reason that he should not engage in them. The
darkness that surrounds these interesting topics of human curiosity may be
intended to furnish endless motives to intellectual activity and exertion. The
constant effort to dispel this darkness, even if it fail of success, invigorates
and improves the thinking faculty. If the subjects of human inquiry were
once exhausted, mind would probably stagnate; but the infinitely diversified
forms and operations of nature, together with the endless food for
speculation which metaphysical subjects offer, prevent the possibility that
such a period should ever arrive.

It is by no means one of the wisest sayings of Solomon that 'there is no
new thing under the sun.' On the contrary, it is probable that were the
present system to continue for millions of years, continual additions would
be making to the mass of human knowledge, and yet, perhaps, it may be a
matter of doubt whether what may be called the capacity of mind be in any
marked and decided manner increasing. A Socrates, a Plato, or an Aristotle,
however confessedly inferior in knowledge to the philosophers of the
present day, do not appear to have been much below them in intellectual
capacity. Intellect rises from a speck, continues in vigour only for a certain
period, and will not perhaps admit while on earth of above a certain number
of impressions. These impressions may, indeed, be infinitely modified, and
from these various modifications, added probably to a difference in the
susceptibility of the original germs, arise the endless diversity of character
that we see in the world; but reason and experience seem both to assure us
that the capacity of individual minds does not increase in proportion to the
mass of existing knowledge. (It is probable that no two grains of wheat are
exactly alike. Soil undoubtedly makes the principal difference in the blades
that spring up, but probably not all. It seems natural to suppose some sort of
difference in the original germs that are afterwards awakened into thought,
and the extraordinary difference of susceptibility in very young children
seems to confirm the supposition.)

The finest minds seem to be formed rather by efforts at original thinking,
by endeavours to form new combinations, and to discover new truths, than
by passively receiving the impressions of other men's ideas. Could we
suppose the period arrived, when there was not further hope of future
discoveries, and the only employment of mind was to acquire pre-existing

knowledge, without any efforts to form new and original combinations,
though the mass of human knowledge were a thousand times greater than it
is at present, yet it is evident that one of the noblest stimulants to mental
exertion would have ceased; the finest feature of intellect would be lost;
everything allied to genius would be at an end; and it appears to be
impossible, that, under such circumstances, any individuals could possess
the same intellectual energies as were possessed by a Locke, a Newton, or a
Shakespeare, or even by a Socrates, a Plato, an Aristotle or a Homer.

If a revelation from heaven of which no person could feel the smallest
doubt were to dispel the mists that now hang over metaphysical subjects,
were to explain the nature and structure of mind, the affections and essences
of all substances, the mode in which the Supreme Being operates in the
works of the creation, and the whole plan and scheme of the Universe, such
an accession of knowledge so obtained, instead of giving additional vigour
and activity to the human mind, would in all probability tend to repress
future exertion and to damp the soaring wings of intellect.

For this reason I have never considered the doubts and difficulties that
involve some parts of the sacred writings as any ardent against their divine
original. The Supreme Being might, undoubtedly, have accompanied his
revelations to man by such a succession of miracles, and of such a nature,
as would have produced universal overpowering conviction and have put an
end at once to all hesitation and discussion. But weak as our reason is to
comprehend the plans of the great Creator, it is yet sufficiently strong to see
the most striking objections to such a revelation. From the little we know of
the structure of the human understanding, we must be convinced that an
overpowering conviction of this kind, instead of tending to the
improvement and moral amelioration of man, would act like the touch of a
torpedo on all intellectual exertion and would almost put an end to the
existence of virtue. If the scriptural denunciations of eternal punishment
were brought home with the same certainty to every man's mind as that the
night will follow the day, this one vast and gloomy idea would take such
full possession of the human faculties as to leave no room for any other
conceptions, the external actions of men would be all nearly alike, virtuous
conduct would be no indication of virtuous disposition, vice and virtue
would be blended together in one common mass, and though the all-seeing

eye of God might distinguish them they must necessarily make the same
impressions on man, who can judge only from external appearances. Under
such a dispensation, it is difficult to conceive how human beings could be
formed to a detestation of moral evil, and a love and admiration of God, and
of moral excellence.

Our ideas of virtue and vice are not, perhaps, very accurate and well-
defined; but few, I think, would call an action really virtuous which was
performed simply and solely from the dread of a very great punishment or
the expectation of a very great reward. The fear of the Lord is very justly
said to be the beginning of wisdom, but the end of wisdom is the love of the
Lord and the admiration of moral good. The denunciations of future
punishment contained in the scriptures seem to be well calculated to arrest
the progress of the vicious and awaken the attention of the careless, but we
see from repeated experience that they are not accompanied with evidence
of such a nature as to overpower the human will and to make men lead
virtuous lives with vicious dispositions, merely from a dread of hereafter. A
genuine faith, by which I mean a faith that shews itself in it the virtues of a
truly Christian life, may generally be considered as an indication of an
amiable and virtuous disposition, operated upon more by love than by pure
unmixed fear.

When we reflect on the temptations to which man must necessarily be
exposed in this world, from the structure of his frame, and the operation of
the laws of nature, and the consequent moral certainty that many vessels
will come out of this mighty creative furnace in wrong shapes, it is
perfectly impossible to conceive that any of these creatures of God's hand
can be condemned to eternal suffering. Could we once admit such an idea,
it our natural conceptions of goodness and justice would be completely
overthrown, and we could no longer look up to God as a merciful and
righteous Being. But the doctrine of life and Mortality which was brought
to light by the gospel, the doctrine that the end of righteousness is
everlasting life, but that the wages of sin are death, is in every respect just
and merciful, and worthy of the great Creator. Nothing can appear more
consonant to our reason than that those beings which come out of the
creative process of the world in lovely and beautiful forms should be
crowned with immortality, while those which come out misshapen, those

whose minds are not suited to a purer and happier state of existence, should
perish and be condemned to mix again with their original clay. Eternal
condemnation of this kind may be considered as a species of eternal
punishment, and it is not wonderful that it should be represented,
sometimes, under images of suffering. But life and death, salvation and
destruction, are more frequently opposed to each other in the New
Testament than happiness and misery. The Supreme Being would appear to
us in a very different view if we were to consider him as pursuing the
creatures that had offended him with eternal hate and torture, instead of
merely condemning to their original insensibility those beings that, by the
operation of general laws, had not been formed with qualities suited to a
purer state of happiness.

Life is, generally speaking, a blessing independent of a future state. It is
a gift which the vicious would not always be ready to throw away, even if
they had no fear of death. The partial pain, therefore, that is inflicted by the
supreme Creator, while he is forming numberless beings to a capacity of the
highest enjoyments, is but as the dust of the balance in comparison of the
happiness that is communicated, and we have every reason to think that
there is no more evil in the world than what is absolutely necessary as one
of the ingredients in the mighty process.

The striking necessity of general laws for the formation of intellect will
not in any respect be contradicted by one or two exceptions, and these
evidently not intended for partial purposes, but calculated to operate upon a
great part of mankind, and through many ages. Upon the idea that I have
given of the formation of mind, the infringement of the general law of
nature, by a divine revelation, will appear in the light of the immediate hand
of God mixing new ingredients in the mighty mass, suited to the particular
state of the process, and calculated to give rise to a new and powerful train
of impressions, tending to purify, exalt, and improve the human mind. The
miracles that accompanied these revelations when they had once excited the
attention of mankind, and rendered it a matter of most interesting
discussion, whether the doctrine was from God or man, had performed their
part, had answered the purpose of the Creator, and these communications of
the divine will were afterwards left to make their way by their own intrinsic

excellence; and, by operating as moral motives, gradually to influence and
improve, and not to overpower and stagnate the faculties of man.

It would be, undoubtedly, presumptuous to say that the Supreme Being
could not possibly have effected his purpose in any other way than that
which he has chosen, but as the revelation of the divine will which we
possess is attended with some doubts and difficulties, and as our reason
points out to us the strongest objections to a revelation which would force
immediate, implicit, universal belief, we have surely just cause to think that
these doubts and difficulties are no argument against the divine origin of the
scriptures, and that the species of evidence which they possess is best suited
to the improvement of the human faculties and the moral amelioration of
mankind.

The idea that the impressions and excitements of this world are the
instruments with which the Supreme Being forms matter into mind, and that
the necessity of constant exertion to avoid evil and to pursue good is the
principal spring of these impressions and excitements, seems to smooth
many of the difficulties that occur in a contemplation of human life, and
appears to me to give a satisfactory reason for the existence of natural and
moral evil, and, consequently, for that part of both, and it certainly is not a
very small part, which arises from the principle of population. But, though,
upon this supposition, it seems highly improbable that evil should ever be
removed from the world; yet it is evident that this impression would not
answer the apparent purpose of the Creator; it would not act so powerfully
as an excitement to exertion, if the quantity of it did not diminish or
increase with the activity or the indolence of man. The continual variations
in the weight and in the distribution of this pressure keep alive a constant
expectation of throwing it off.
"Hope springs eternal in the Human breast,
Man never is, but always to be blest."

Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity. We are not
patiently to submit to it, but to exert ourselves to avoid it. It is not only the
interest but the duty of every individual to use his utmost efforts to remove
evil from himself and from as large a circle as he can influence, and the
more he exercises himself in this duty, the more wisely he directs his

efforts, and the more successful these efforts are; the more he will probably
improve and exalt his own mind, and the more completely does he appear
to fulfil the will of his Creator.

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