A REPLY TO THE ESSAY ON POPULATION BY THE REV. T. R. MALTHUS In a Series of Letters. To which are added, Extracts from the Essay, with Notes (continued 3)

It may be proper to observe, in the first place, that Mr. Malthus by making vice and misery the necessary consequences of his favourite principle lays himself open to a very obvious objection. For if he means to prove any thing by his theory, the question immediately is, what degree of vice and misery is rendered necessary by this principle, or by the physical constitution of man? Are we to suppose that only so much evil is necessary as naturally grows out of the British constitution? Or does this principle also prove that all the evils that are suffered under the Turkish government, or that were suffered under the old government of France, or that may arise out of its present government are equally necessary and salutary? How far are we to go? Where are we to stop? Are we to consider every evil and abuse as necessary, merely because it exists, or only as much of the thing as we cannot get rid of? But how much can we really get rid of? Are vice and misery uniformly owing to the development of this principle in certain situations, or are they to be in part ascribed to the intervention of other arbitrary, and gratuitous causes, the operation of which may be more easily set aside? In what manner are we to distinguish between what is necessary, and what is not? All these questions require to be asked before we can proceed to build any practical conclusions on Mr. Malthus’s theory of the evils of population. 69The vague, general term, ‘vice and misery,’ gives us no clue. It is mere cant; and applies equally to the best and worst of all possible governments. It proves either nothing, or it proves a great deal more than I conceive Mr. Malthus would in all cases wish to prove by it.

There is no species of vice or oppression that does not find a ready excuse in this kind of reasoning. And besides, by leaving the quantity of vice and misery always uncertain, we never subject ourselves to the necessity of following a general principle into any obnoxious conclusions; and are always at liberty to regulate our opinions according to our convenience by saying—I would have no more vice and misery than at present prevails: but that degree of vice and misery which is inwoven with the present constitution of things, I would by no means have removed, it might endanger the whole fabric. This is a double advantage. We thus sacrifice to the powers that be, without violating decorum, or being driven off our guard by an inflexible and pedantic logic. I have so good an opinion of Mr. Malthus that I do not think he has any predilection for vice and misery in the abstract, or for their own sakes: I do not believe he would stand forward as the advocate of any abuses from which he himself does not reap some benefit, or which he may not get something by defending.

I do not know that I can go so far as with Mr. Godwin to ascribe the original sin of the worst men to social institutions, but of this I am very sure that that original sin and those institutions do not proceed entirely from the principle of population. There are other vices and mischievous propensities inherent in our nature, besides the love of pleasure. We are troubled with a complication of disorders, and it is bad advice to say, that we ought to direct all our attention to the one that is perhaps the most inveterate, or because we despair of doing any thing with that, make no attempts to counteract the progress of the others, either by palliatives or otherwise. If we are deceived with respect to the real extent, and sources of our disorders, it is impossible we should hit upon the right method of cure, whatever might be the case, if we were informed of our true situation.—The principle of population alone, according to the description Mr. Malthus gives of it as a principle of unbridled and insatiable lust, would indeed be sufficient to account for all the vice and misery in the world, and for a great deal more than there is in the world. It would soon overturn every thing. But we have seen that that account is not just. It is in fact only one of the principles or passions by which the conduct of mankind is influenced; and he would be a bold man who should assert that neither ambition, nor avarice, nor sloth, 70nor ignorance, nor prejudice have had any share in producing the various evils that abound in civil society. The other passions are sturdy claimants and know how to bustle for themselves, and will not be so easily pushed out of the world. Let any one write the words, ambition, pride, cruelty, hatred, oppression, falsehood, selfishness, indolence, lust, and hunger in the same line, and let him see if there is any peculiar charm in the two last, which draws all their virtue and meaning out of the rest. Yet this is the impression which Mr. Malthus seems anxious to leave on the minds of his readers. Indeed all the others appear to owe their efficacy and their sting to lust alone. If it were not for this one principle, the world might go on very well.

Mr. Malthus charges it as a great error on Mr. Godwin’s system that ‘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.’ Be it so, that this is an error. The next question is, as Mr. Malthus does not deny that these institutions are the immediate causes of many of the evils that exist, to what principle they really owe their rise. Mr. Malthus says, they are the necessary results of laws inherent in our nature, and that though all the other passions and vices of men could be got rid of altogether, the principle of population alone would still render those institutions with all the abuses belonging to them as necessary as ever. This I take upon me to dispute. Will he say, that (leaving the principle of population entirely out of the question) pride, avarice, and indolence have had no share in the establishment, or continuance of the inequality of property, in goading men on to the accumulation of immense riches by oppression, extortion, fraud, perjury, and every species of villainy, or in making them undergo every kind of distress, sooner than apply themselves to some regular and useful occupation. If I were inclined to maintain a paradox on the subject, I might take up Hume’s assertion, ‘that indolence is the source of all mischief in the world.’ For if men had not been averse to labour, if there had been no idlers to take advantage of, to offer temptation to, and enlist upon any terms in any lawless enterprize, that promised an easy booty, the tyrant would have been without his slaves, the robber without his gang, and the rich man without his dependents. But these smart points and pithy sayings are soon found to be fallacious, if we attend a little closely to the subject. For instance, it may be true that if there had been no idle people, there would have been no one to take advantage of, but if there had been no pride, rapacity, or selfishness, there would have been no one to take an undue advantage of them, or foment the mischief. The fellows that generally compose 71a gang of robbers only wish to gain a cheap livelihood by acts of violence; the captain of the gang is also actuated by vanity, revenge, the spirit of adventure, and the desire to keep the country for twenty or thirty miles round in awe of him. The common soldier is glad of sixpence a-day to be shot at every now and then, and do nothing the rest of his time: the general is not easy, unless he can lay waste provinces, overrun kingdoms, and make the world ring with the terror of his name. The lazy and unthinking would not do half the mischief, of which they are capable, without the active, the enterprizing and turbulent: fools and knaves are as necessary to the body politic, as the head and limbs are to the human body. The Romans might have staid quietly within their own walls, but for the plotting heads at home that sent them out to victory; and his thirty thousand followers would no more have thought of setting out to India of their own accord, than Alexander would have thought of marching there by himself.

It is to me pretty clear that as long as there are such passions as sloth and rapacity, these will be sufficient to account for the unequal division of property, and will render the laws relating to it necessary: and it is equally clear to my mind that if these passions could be completely subdued, so that no one would refuse his share in the common labour, or endeavour to take an unfair advantage of others either by force or fraud, that the established administration of property would be no longer necessary.^[13] If, as Mr. Malthus supposes, 72‘Benevolence had so far established her reign in all hearts,’ that every one was ready to give up the enjoyments of ease and luxury as far as related to himself, I do not think that in such a state of unparalleled disinterestedness and heroic virtue, any madman would be found to violate the public happiness, and begin the work of contention anew, for the sake of transmitting a contingent inheritance of vice and misery to his heirs! If reason and virtue are at present no match for the principle of population, neither are they a match for the principle of selfishness, or for any of our other passions. But truly, if benevolence had once established her reign in all hearts, we should see wonders, she would perform the part of vice and misery to a miracle.—It is evident then that the seeds of inequality, of vice and misery are not sown entirely in the principle of population; that the same untoward passions which first rendered civil establishments necessary, have continued to operate ever since, that they have produced most of the disorders in the world, and are still in as much force as ever; that they very well deserve a chapter by themselves in the history of human nature, and ought not to come in as a note or parenthesis to Mr. Malthus’s great work.

But whatever account we may chuse to give of the origin of the establishment of property or government in general, this has nothing to do with the real question, unless it could be shewn that the same form of government, the same inequality of conditions, and the same degree of vice and misery are to be found alike in every country. Mr. Malthus’s system goes to the support of all political regulations and existing evils, or it goes to the support of none. Let us cast our eyes over the map of Europe, and ask whether all that variety of governments and manners by which it is distinguished took their rise solely from the principle of population. A principle common to human nature, a law inherent in the physical constitution of man, may in its progress be necessarily attended with a certain degree of vice and misery; but it cannot be productive of different degrees of vice and misery in different countries; as the stern law of necessity, it must operate every where alike. If it does not do so, this of itself shews that it is not the sole moving spring in all human institutions, that it is not beyond the reach of all regulation and control, and that there are other circumstances, accidents, and principles on which the happiness of nations depends. Whatever difference there is, then, between one government and another, whether that government is despotic, or mixed, or free; whatever difference there is in the administration of that government, whether it is cruel, oppressive, and arbitrary in the extreme, or mild, just, and merciful; whatever difference there is between the manners of one nation and those of another, 73whether the most licentious that can be, or strict and exemplary; whatever difference there is in the arts and conveniences of life, in the improvements of trade and agriculture in various countries, whatever differences are produced by religion, by contrarieties of opinion, by the state of knowledge, by useful or mischievous regulations of all kinds, all these cannot be owing to one and the same cause.

Will Mr. Malthus say that all these differences are as nothing, that they are not worth insisting on, or contending about, that they are nominal, rather than real, or at any rate that what is gained in one way is lost in another, for that the principle of population still requires the same vent, and produces first or last the same quantity of vice and misery of one sort or other in every country? He must assert on the one hand that all other causes put together do not materially affect the happiness of a people, or on the other hand that the state of all those other causes depends on, and arises out of the state of population, though they do not in the least influence the principle of population itself. These absurdities, than which it would be difficult to advance greater, are however necessary to bear out the author’s conclusion, that arts, knowledge, liberty and virtue, and the best institutions can do little for the happiness of mankind. For instance, if it is true that religion or opinion of any kind exerts a direct influence over morals, then it is not true that morals depend entirely on the state of population. Or if it is true, that the invention of a useful art, which is accident, or the public encouragement of it, which is design, may contribute to the support of a larger population without multiplying its inconveniences, then it is not true that all human happiness or misery can be calculated according to a mechanical ratio. But these matters are, I confess, set in the clearest light by a reference to facts, and I can quote no better authority than Mr. Malthus himself.

He says, ‘It will not be difficult, from the accounts of travellers, to trace the checks to population, and the causes of its present decay [in Turkey]; and as there is little difference in the manners of the Turks, whether they inhabit Europe or Asia, it will not be worth while to make them the subject of distinct consideration.’ [I shall presume that I have so far reconciled the reader’s mind to the bugbear, population, that he will not regard depopulation as one of the most beautiful features in the economy of a state.]

Our author then proceeds, ‘The fundamental cause of the low state of population in Turkey, compared with its extent of territory, is undoubtedly the nature of its government. Its tyranny, its feebleness, its bad laws and worse administration of them, with the consequent insecurity of property, throw such obstacles in the way of 74agriculture, that the means of subsistence are necessarily decreasing yearly, and with them, of course, the number of people. The miri or general land-tax, paid to the sultan, is in itself moderate; but by abuses inherent in the Turkish government, the pachas, and their agents have found out the means of rendering it ruinous. Though they cannot absolutely alter the impost which has been established by the sultan, they have introduced a number of changes, which, without the name, produce all the effect of an augmentation. In Syria, according to Volney, having the greatest part of the land at their disposal, they clog their concessions with burthensome conditions, and exact the half, and sometimes even two-thirds of the crop. When the harvest is over, they cavil about losses, and, as they have the power in their hands, they carry off what they think proper.’ [What they leave behind them, is what Mr. Malthus when he gets into his abstractions calls ‘the fund appropriated to the maintenance of labour,’ or, ‘the aggregate quantity of food possessed by the owners of land beyond their own consumption.’] ‘If the season fail, they still exact the same sum, and expose every thing that the poor peasant possesses to sale. To these constant oppressions are added a thousand accidental extortions. Sometimes a whole village is laid under contribution for some real or imaginary offence. Arbitrary presents are exacted on the accession of each governor; grass, barley, and straw are demanded for his horses’; [Mr. Malthus thinks, farther on in his book, that ‘the waste of the rich, and the horses kept for pleasure’ in this country are no detriment to the poor here, but rather a benefit, page 478.] ‘and commissions are multiplied, that the soldiers who carry the orders may live upon the starving peasants, whom they treat with the most brutal insolence and injustice. The consequence of these depredations is, that the poorer class of inhabitants, ruined, and unable any longer to pay the miri, become a burden to the village,’ [something I suppose in the same way that the poor among us become a burden to the parish] ‘or fly into the cities; but the miri is unalterable, and the sum to be levied must be found somewhere. The portion of those who are thus driven from their homes falls on the remaining inhabitants, whose burden, though at first light, now becomes insupportable. If they should be visited by two years of drought and famine, the whole village is ruined and abandoned; and the tax, which it should have paid, is levied on the neighbouring lands. The same mode of proceeding takes place with regard to the tax on Christians, which has been raised by these means,’ [by what means, by the principle of population?] ‘from three, five, and eleven piastres, at which it was first fixed, to thirty-five and forty, which absolutely impoverishes those on whom it is levied, and obliges them 75to leave the country. It has been remarked that these exactions have made a rapid progress during the last forty years, from which time are dated the decline of agriculture, the depopulation of the country, and the diminution in the quantity of the specie carried to Constantinople. The peasants are every where reduced to a little flat cake of barley, or doura, onions, lentils, and water. Not to lose any part of their corn they leave in it all sorts of wild grain, which often produces bad consequences. In the mountains of Lebanon and Nablous, in time of dearth, they gather the acorns from the oak which they eat after boiling or roasting them on the ashes. By a natural consequence of this misery, the art of cultivation is in the most deplorable state. The husbandman is almost without instruments, and those he has are very bad. His plough is frequently no more than the branch of a tree cut below a fork and used without wheels. The ground is tilled by asses and cows, rarely by oxen, which would bespeak too much riches. In the districts exposed to the Arabs, as in Palestine, the countryman must sow with his musket in his hand, and scarcely does the corn turn yellow before it is reaped and concealed in subterraneous caverns. As little as possible is employed for seed corn, because the peasants sow no more than is barely necessary for their subsistence. Their whole industry is limited to the supply of their immediate wants, and to procure a little bread, a few onions, a blue shirt, and a bit of woollen, much labour is not necessary. The peasant lives therefore in distress, but at least he does not enrich his tyrants, and the avarice of despotism is its own punishment.’ [Note.—These are the unhappy persons, as our author expresses it in a passage, which may hereafter be quoted at length, ‘who in the great lottery of life have drawn a blank; and with whose exorbitant and unreasonable demands the owners of the aforesaid surplus produce neither think it just nor natural to comply.’ I confess, I cannot account for all the contention and distress which is here implied, for the conflict between famine and riches, when I seriously consider with Mr. Malthus, ‘that the quantity of food, which one man can consume, is necessarily limited by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; that it is not certainly probable that he should throw away the rest; or if he exchanged his surplus produce for the labour of others, that this would be better than that these others should absolutely starve.’ But human life, as well as our reasonings about it, is a mystery, a dream.] ‘This picture which is drawn by Volney, in describing the state of the peasants in Syria, seems to be confirmed by all the other travellers in these countries, and according to Eton, it represents very nearly the condition of the peasants in the greater part of the Turkish dominions. Universally 76the offices of every denomination are set up to public sale, and in the intrigues of the seraglio, by which the disposal of all places is regulated, every thing is done by means of bribes. The pachas in consequence, who are sent into the provinces, exert to the utmost their power of extortion, but are always outdone by the officers immediately below them, who, in their turn, leave room for their subordinate agents. The pacha must raise money to pay the tribute, and also to indemnify himself for the purchase of his office; support his dignity, and make a provision in case of accidents; and as all power, both civil and military, centers in his person, from his representing the sultan, the means are at his discretion, and the quickest are invariably considered as the best. Uncertain of to-morrow, he treats his province as a mere transient possession, and endeavours to reap, if possible, in one day, the fruit of many years, without the smallest regard to his successor, or the injury that he may do to the permanent revenue. The cultivator is necessarily more exposed to these extortions than the inhabitants of the towns. From the nature of his employment, he is fixed to one spot, and the productions of agriculture do not admit of being easily concealed. The tenure of the land and the right of succession are besides uncertain. When a father dies, the inheritance reverts to the sultan, and the children can only redeem the succession by a considerable sum of money. These considerations naturally occasion an indifference to landed estates. The country is deserted, and each person is desirous of flying to the towns, where he will not only in general meet with better treatment, but may hope to acquire a species of wealth, which he can more easily conceal from the eyes of his rapacious masters. To complete the ruin of agriculture, a maximum is in many cases established, and the peasants are obliged to furnish the towns with corn at a fixed price. It is a maxim of Turkish policy, originating in the feebleness of the government, and the fear of popular tumults, to keep the price of corn low in all the considerable towns. In the case of a failure in the harvest, every person who possesses any corn is obliged to sell it at the price fixed, under pain of death: and if there be none in the neighbourhood, other districts are ransacked for it. When Constantinople is in want of provisions, ten provinces are perhaps famished for a supply. At Damascus, during a scarcity in 1784, the people paid only one penny farthing a pound for their bread, while the peasants in the villages were absolutely dying with hunger. The effect of such a system of government on agriculture, need not be insisted on. The causes of the decreasing means of subsistence are but too obvious; and the checks which keep the population down to the level of these decreasing resources, may be traced with nearly equal 77certainty, and will appear to include almost every species of vice and misery.’ Happy country, secured by the very nature of its government from the terrors of increasing population, and where every species of vice and misery, wisely anticipated, on the principle that the imagination of a thing is worse than the reality, takes away all fear of any greater evils than those they already endure!

In the same chapter, he says, that in Persia ‘the lower classes of people are obliged to defer marriage till late; and that it is only among the rich that this union takes place early. The dreadful convulsions to which this country has been subject for many hundred years, must have been fatal to her agriculture. The periods of repose from external wars, and internal commotions have been short and few, and even during the times of profound peace, the frontier provinces have been constantly subject to the ravages of the Tartars.—The effect of this state of things is such as might be expected. The proportion of uncultivated to cultivated land, Sir John Chardin states to be, ten to one; and the mode in which the officers of the state and private owners let out their lands to husbandmen, is not that which is best calculated to reanimate industry. The other checks to population in Persia are nearly the same as those in Turkey. The superior destruction of the plague in Turkey is perhaps nearly balanced by the greater frequency of internal commotions in Persia.’

These extracts furnish, I think, a tolerably clear idea of the manner in which it is possible for human institutions to aggravate instead of mitigating the necessary evils of population. We have a sufficient specimen of the effects of bad government, of bad laws, of the worse execution of them, of feeble and selfish policy, of wars and commotions, or of diseases probably occasioned for the most part by the numbers of people who are huddled together in dirt and poverty in the great towns in the manner we have seen—in altering the natural proportion between the produce of the soil, and the maintenance of the inhabitants; in wantonly diminishing the means of subsistence by a most unjust and unequal distribution of them; in diverting the produce of industry from its proper channels, in drying up its sources, in causing a stagnation of all the motives and principles which animate human life, in destroying all confidence, independence, hope, cheerfulness, and manly exertion, in thwarting the bounties of nature by waste, rapacity, extortion and violence, and spreading want, misery, and desolation in their stead. How admirably does Mr. Malthus balance his checks! What the plague does in Turkey, is in Persia happily effected by means of civil commotions. Population is thus kept down to the level of the means of subsistence. But it seems, that wars, and intestine commotions, those blind drudges of Providence 78in clearing away the filth, rubbish, and other evils of a too crowded population, sometimes go beyond their errand, or do their work the wrong way, by striking at the root of population instead of lopping off its superfluous branches. According to our author’s general system, the killing ten, or twenty, or a hundred thousand men is an evil of a very trifling magnitude, if it is to be looked upon as an evil at all. Population will only go on with the greater alacrity, marriage will be rendered more practicable, and the deficiency will soon be supplied from the sprightly and ever-teeming source of nature. The dreadful convulsions, however, to which Persia has been subject for so many hundred years have not been merely vents to carry off the excess of population beyond the means of subsistence, but they have further been fatal to agriculture itself, or to those very means of subsistence. The proportion of uncultivated, to cultivated land, we find, is ten to one; so that the population is not only reduced to a level with the means of subsistence, but reduced ten times lower than it need be.^[14]

I beg leave to accompany this description of the effects of political regulations and the established administration of property in Turkey, with the following critical commentary, taken from another part of the same work, which will throw considerable light on the necessity of those institutions to prevent the evils of population. Mr. Malthus’s usual plea for ‘vice and misery,’ is that nothing else can put a stop to the excesses of population; which they do in the most effectual and eligible manner. But he has here deserted his idols.

‘It has appeared, I think, clearly, in the review of different societies given in the former part of this work, that those countries, the inhabitants of which were sunk in the most barbarous ignorance, or oppressed by the most cruel tyranny, however low they might be in actual population, were very populous in proportion to their means of subsistence; and upon the slightest failure of the seasons, generally suffered the severities of want.’ [Yet it was the sole object of Mr. Malthus’s discovery to prove the converse proposition, that the highest degree of knowledge, and a perfect exemption from every species of tyranny would only lead to the lowest state of human wretchedness.]—‘Ignorance and despotism seem to have no tendency to destroy the passion which prompts to increase; but they effectually destroy the checks to it from reason and foresight. The improvident barbarian who thinks only of his present wants, or the miserable peasant, who from his political situation feels little security of reaping what he has sown, will seldom be deterred from gratifying his passions by the prospect of inconveniences which cannot be expected to press 79on him under three or four years. But though this want of foresight, which is fostered by ignorance and despotism, tend thus rather to encourage the procreation of children, it is absolutely fatal to the industry which is to support them. Industry cannot exist without foresight and security. The indolence of the savage is well known; and the poor Egyptian or Abyssinian farmer, without capital, who rents land, which is let out yearly to the highest bidder and who is constantly subject to the demands of his tyrannical masters, to the casual plunder of an enemy, and not unfrequently to the violation of his miserable contract, can have no heart to be industrious, and if he had, could not exercise that industry with success. Even poverty itself, which appears to be the great spur to industry, when it has once passed certain limits, almost ceases to operate. The indigence which is hopeless, destroys all vigorous exertion, and confines the efforts to what is sufficient for bare existence. It is the hope of bettering our condition and the fear of want, rather than want itself, that is the best stimulus to industry, and its most constant and best directed efforts will almost invariably be found among a class of people above the class of the wretchedly poor.’

What a pity that a man, who writes so well at times, should, for the sake of an hypothesis, involve ‘himself in absurdities and contradictions that would disgrace the lips of an ideot.’ Mr. Malthus will excuse me, if I make use of some of the hints contained in this excellent passage, for the benefit of our English poor, who I think should not have harder measure dealt them than others, and try to soften some of the harshest constructions of the grinding law of necessity in their favour. I do not see why they alone are to be the martyrs of an abstraction. But Mr. Malthus reserves the application of his theory in its purity for his own countrymen. He has some natural feelings, and a certain degree of tender weakness for the distresses of other countries, but he will not suffer his feelings for a moment to get the better of his reason, with regard to those to whom he is bound by stronger ties, and over whose interests he watches with a paternal anxiety. He will hear of no palliations, no excuses, no shuffling temporary expedients to put off the evil day, he insists upon their submitting to the full operation of the penalty incurred by the laws of God and of nature, nothing short of the utmost severity will satisfy him, (’tis death to spare) he will not bate them a jot of his argument, he makes them drain the unsavoury cup of misery to the very dregs.

In the same chapter, which is entitled ‘Of the principal sources of the prevailing errors on population,’ he says, ‘It has been observed that many countries at the period of their greatest populousness have 80lived in the greatest plenty, and have been able to export corn; but at other periods, when their population was very low, have lived in continual poverty and want, and have been obliged to import corn. Egypt, Palestine, Rome, Sicily, and Spain are cited as particular exemplifications of this fact; and it has been inferred, that an increase of population in any state, not cultivated to the utmost, will tend rather to augment than diminish the relative plenty of the whole society,’ &c. After contradicting this inference without giving any reasons against it, he goes on, ‘Scarcity and extreme poverty, therefore, may or may not accompany an increasing population, according to circumstances. But they must always accompany a permanently declining population; because there has never been, nor probably ever will be, any other cause than want of food, which makes the population of a country permanently decline. In the numerous instances of depopulation which occur in history, the causes of it may always be traced to the want of industry, or the ill-direction of that industry, arising from violence, bad government, ignorance, &c. which first occasions a want of food, and of course depopulation follows. When Rome adopted the custom of importing all her corn, and laying all Italy into pasture, she soon declined in population. The causes of the depopulation of Egypt and Turkey have already been alluded to; and in the case of Spain, it was certainly not the numerical loss of people, occasioned by the expulsion of the Moors; but the industry and capital thus expelled, which permanently injured her population.’ [I do not myself see, how the expulsion of capital could permanently injure the population.] ‘When a country has been depopulated by violent causes, if a bad government, with its usual concomitant, insecurity of property, ensue, which has generally been the case in all those countries which are now less peopled than formerly; neither the food nor the population, will recover themselves, and the inhabitants will probably live in severe want,’ &c. Yet Mr. Malthus elsewhere affects to consider all human institutions and contrivances as perfectly indifferent to the question. We have here, however, a truer account of the matter. The state of population is evidently no proof of what it might be: to judge whether it is more or less than it might or ought to be, we must take into consideration good and bad government, the progress of civilization, &c. It is a thing de facto, not de jure. It is not that rock, against which whosoever sets himself shall be dashed to pieces, but the clay moulded by the potter into vessels of honour or dishonour. With respect to Spain, it is allowed that her population is deficient, or short of what it might be. The problem of political economy I take to be, how far this is the case with respect to all other countries, and how to remedy the 81defect; or how to support the greatest number of people in the greatest degree of comfort. But I have said this more than once before.

To the same purpose I might quote Algernon Sydney, who in his Discourses on government gives the following account of the decline and weakness of many of the modern states from the loss of liberty.^[15]

‘I take Greece to have been happy and glorious, when it was full of populous cities, flourishing in all the arts that deserve praise among men; when they were courted and feared by the greatest kings, and never assaulted by any but to his own loss and confusion; when Babylon and Susa trembled at the motion of their arms: and their valour, exercised in those wars and tumults, which our author [Filmer] looks upon as the greatest evils, was raised to such a power, that nothing upon earth was found able to resist them. And I think it now miserable, when peace reigns within their empty walls, and the poor remains of those exhausted nations, sheltering themselves under the ruins of the desolated cities, have neither any thing that deserves to be disputed among them, nor spirit or force to repel the injuries they daily suffer from a proud and insupportable master.’

‘The like may be said of Italy. Whilst it was inhabited by nations governing themselves by their own will, they fell sometimes into domestic seditions, and had frequent wars with their neighbours. When they were free, they loved their country and were always ready to fight in its defence. Such as succeeded well, increased in vigour and power; and even those which were the most unfortunate in one age, found means to repair their losses, if their government continued. While they had a property in their goods, they would not suffer the country to be invaded, since they knew they could have none, if it were lost. This gave occasion to wars and tumults; it sharpened their courage, kept up a good discipline, and the nations that were most exercised by them, always increased in power and number: so that no country seems ever to have been of greater strength than Italy was when Hannibal invaded it, and after his defeat the rest of the world was not able to resist their valour and power. They sometimes killed one another; but their enemies never got any thing but burying-places within their territories. All things are now brought into a very different method by the blessed governments they are under. The fatherly care of the king of Spain, the pope, and other princes 82has established peace among them. We have not in many ages heard of any sedition among the Latins, Sabines, Volsci, Equi, Samnites, and others. The thin, half-starved inhabitants of walls supported by ivy fear neither popular tumults, nor foreign alarms; and their sleep is only interrupted by hunger, the cries of their children, or the howling of wolves. Instead of many turbulent, contentious cities, they have a few scattered, silent cottages; and the fierceness of those nations is so tempered, that every rascally collector of taxes extorts, without fear, from every man, that which should be the nourishment of his family. And if any of those countries are free from these pernicious vermin, it is through the extremity of their poverty.’

[How differently do people see things! According to Mr. Malthus, this rascally tax-gatherer, this vile nuisance, is a very sacred sort of character, a privileged person, one of the most indispensable and active instruments in the procession of vice and misery, those harbingers of human happiness; and all our reproaches and indignation should fall on the poor peasant, for bringing beings into the world whom he could not maintain, in ‘the face of the clearest warning, and in defiance of the express command of God,’ as proved by the tax-book. Our superficial politician was not aware (Mr. Malthus tells us that first appearances are very deceitful) that the produce of the husbandman’s labour was much better employed in supporting the waste and extravagance of the rich, than in affording nourishment to his family, as this would only enable him to rear his family, which must operate as an encouragement to marriage, and this again would produce other marriages, and so on ad infinitum, to which unrestricted increase of population it is necessary to put a timely stop.]

‘Even in Rome a man may be circumvented by the fraud of a priest, or poisoned by one, who would have his estate, wife, whore, or child; but nothing is done that looks like violence or tumult. The governors do as little fear Gracchus as Hannibal; and instead of wearying their subjects in wars,’ [We have not yet reached this pitch of perfection] ‘they only seek by perverted laws, corrupt judges, false witnesses, and vexatious suits, to cheat them of their money and inheritance. This is the best part of their condition. Where these arts are used, there are men, and they have something to lose; but for the most part, the lands lie waste; and they who were formerly troubled with the disorders incident to populous cities, now enjoy the quiet and peaceable estate of a wilderness.—Again, there is a way of killing worse than that of the sword; for as Tertullian says upon a different occasion, vetare nasci est interficere; those governments are in the highest degree guilty of blood, which 83by taking from men the means of living, bring some to perish through want, drive others out of the country, and generally dissuade men from marriage, by taking from them all ways of supporting their families.’ [Our author, we see, has not here put the cart before the horse. He seems to have understood the necessity of food to population, though Mr. Malthus’s essay had not then been heard of.] ‘Notwithstanding all the seditions of Florence, and other cities of Tuscany, the horrid factions of Guelphs and Gibelines,^[16] Neri and Bianchi, nobles and commons, they continued populous, strong, and exceeding rich; but in the space of less than a hundred and fifty years, the peaceable reign of the Medici is thought to have destroyed nine parts in ten of the people of that province. Among other things it is remarkable, that when Philip the second of Spain gave Sienna to the Duke of Florence, his embassador then at Rome sent him word, that he had given away more than six hundred and fifty thousand subjects; and it is not believed there are now twenty thousand souls inhabiting that city and territory. Pisa, Pistoia, Arezzo, Cortona, and other towns, that were then good and populous, are in the like proportion diminished, and Florence more than any. When that city had been long troubled with seditions, tumults, and wars, for the most part unprosperous, it still retained such strength, that when Charles the eighth of France, being admitted as a friend with his whole army, which soon after conquered the kingdom of Naples, thought to master them, the people, taking up arms, struck such a terror into him, that he was glad to depart upon such conditions as they thought fit to impose. Machiavel reports, that in the year 1298 Florence alone, with the Val d’Arno, a small territory belonging to that city, could, in a few hours, by the sound of a bell, bring together a hundred thousand well-armed men. Whereas now that city, with all the others in that province, are brought to such despicable weakness, emptiness, poverty, and baseness, that they can neither resist the oppressions of their own prince, nor defend him or themselves, if they were assaulted by a foreign enemy. The people are dispersed 84or destroyed, and the best families sent to seek habitations in Venice, Genoa, Rome, and Lucca. This is not the effect of war or pestilence: they enjoy a perfect peace, and suffer no other plague than the government they are under. But he who has thus cured them of disorders and tumults does in my opinion deserve no greater praise than a physician, who should boast there was not a sick person in a house committed to his care, when he had poisoned all that were in it. The Spaniards have established the like peace in the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, the West Indies, and other places. The Turks by the same means prevent tumults in their dominions. And they are of such efficacy in all places, that Mario Chigi, brother to pope Alexander the seventh, by one sordid cheat upon the sale of corn, is said within eight years to have destroyed above a third part of the people in the ecclesiastical state. And that country, which was the strength of the Romans in the time of the Carthaginian wars, suffered more by the covetousness and fraud of that villain, than by all the defeats received from Hannibal, &c. Chap. ii. p. 223.

It will be worth the reader’s while to turn to Lord Kaims’s account of the kingdom of Siam, which, though one of the most fertile countries in the world, is reduced to the lowest state of poverty and wretchedness by the absurd and tyrannical policy of its government. Some of the finest districts that were formerly cultivated, are now inhabited only by wild beasts. One of the arts by which they preserve the balance of population in that country is, that the keeper of the king’s menagerie is authorized to let loose the elephants into the gardens of all those within a given distance of the capital, who do not pay him a large fine yearly to be excused from this intrusion. Yet according to our Essayist, human institutions have a very slight influence on the happiness of a people, because they cannot alter the necessary ratios of the increase of food and population. It is probable, however, that some of the cases here cited, which seem to bear rather hard on Mr. Malthus’s rule, might have led those hasty writers, whom he censures for their want of a due insight into the subject, to conceive an unjust prejudice against human institutions; and perhaps some of my readers may also be led to suspect, from not comprehending fully the scope and connection of his arguments, that bad governments are not quite such innocent things, as Mr. Malthus would sometimes represent them. Is it necessary to press this subject any farther? I do not pretend to be very deep-read in history, in the constitution of states, the principles of legislation, the progress of manners, or the immediate causes of the revolutions that have taken place in different countries. All that I can presume to bring to this question is a little stubborn common sense, an earnestness of feeling, 85and a certain familiarity with abstruse subjects, that is not willingly or easily made the dupe of flimsy distinctions. But without much learning in one’s self, it is easy to take advantage of the learning of others. By the help of a common-place book, which is all that is wanted in these cases (and I am fortunate enough to have such a one by me in the collections of ‘that honest chronicler,’ James Burgh) I might soon swell the size of these letters to a bulk, which the bookseller would not like, by a number of striking illustrations from the most celebrated authors. I might make myself a splendid livery of the wisdom of others. But I have no taste for this pompous drudgery. However, to satisfy those readers who are unable to discern the truth without the spectacles of facts, it will not be amiss to refer to the opinions of a few of the writers, who seem with sufficient clearness to have traced the causes of the rise and fall of particular states to principles quite independent of, which were neither first set in motion nor afterwards regulated by the principle of population, and the effects of which were utterly disproportionate to the actual operation of that principle. After all, it is impossible to answer a paradox satisfactorily. The real answer consists of the feelings and observations of our whole lives; and of course, it must be impossible to embody these in any single statement. All that can be done in these cases is to set the imagination once more in its old track.

‘Hear,’ says my authority, ‘the excellent Montague on the prevalence of luxury among the Romans.’

‘If we connect the various strokes interspersed through what we have remaining of the writings of Sallust, which were levelled at the vices of his countrymen, we shall be able to form a just idea of the manners of the Romans in his time. From this picture, we must be convinced, that not only those shocking calamities, which the republic suffered during the contest between Marius and Sylla, but those subsequent and more fatal evils, which brought on the utter extinction of the Roman liberty and constitution, were the natural effects of that foreign luxury, which first introduced venality and corruption.’ [Now by luxury we may understand a very great superabundance of the good things of this life, either in the community at large or in certain classes of it, but it cannot by any construction be made to signify the general and absolute want of them. Luxury in some classes may produce want in others, but poverty is in this case the effect of the unequal distribution of the produce of the earth, not of its real deficiency. Or if by luxury we understand only certain exterior decorations or artificial indulgences, which have nothing to do with the real support of life, such as dress, furniture, buildings, pictures, gold and silver, rarities, 86delicacies of all kinds, every thing connected with shew and expence (though all these things among the Romans being the effects not merely of leisure or of supernumerary hands, but of power, and foreign dominion, must imply a command over the more substantial necessaries of life) yet even in this sense the passion for luxury or for those indulgences (which is here said to have been one great instrument in the overthrow of the state) is certainly a very different thing from the passion of hunger, or want of food, Mr. Malthus’s key to the solution of all problems of a political nature.] ‘Though the introduction of luxury from Asia preceded the ruin of Carthage in point of time, yet as Sallust informs us, the dread of that dangerous rival restrained the Romans within the bounds of decency and order. But as soon as ever that obstacle was removed, they gave a full scope to their ungoverned passions. The change in their manners was not gradual, and by little and little as before, but rapid and instantaneous. Religion, justice, modesty, decency, all regard for divine or human laws, were swept away at once by the irresistible torrent of corruption. The nobility strained their privileges, and the people their liberty, alike into the most unbounded licentiousness. Every one made the dictate of his own will, his only rule of action. Public virtue, and the love of their country, which had raised the Romans to the empire of the universe, were extinct. Money, which alone could enable them to gratify their darling luxury, was substituted in its place. Power, dominion, honours, and universal respect were annexed to the possession of money. Contempt, and whatever was the most reproachful was the bitter portion of poverty; and to be poor, grew to be the greatest of all crimes, in the estimation of the Romans. Thus wealth and poverty contributed alike to the ruin of the republic. The rich employed their wealth in the acquisition of power, and their power in every kind of oppression and rapine for the acquisition of more wealth. The poor, now dissolute and desperate, were ready to engage in every seditious insurrection, which promised them the plunder of the rich, and set up both their liberty and country to sale, to the best bidder. The republic, which was the common prey to both, was thus rent to pieces between the contending factions.—A state so circumstanced must always furnish an ample supply of proper instruments for faction. For as luxury consists in an inordinate gratification of the sensual passions, and as the more they are indulged, the more importunate they grow, the greatest fortune must at last sink under their insatiable demands. Thus luxury necessarily produces corruption. As wealth is necessary to the support of luxury, all those who have dissipated their private fortunes in the purchase of pleasure, will be ever ready to enlist in the cause of faction for the 87wages of corruption. And when once the idea of respect and homage is annexed to the possession of wealth alone, honour, probity, every virtue and every amiable quality will be held cheap in comparison and looked upon as awkward, and quite unfashionable. But as the spirit of liberty will yet exist in some degree, in a state which retains the name of freedom, even though the manners of that state should be generally depraved, an opposition will arise from those virtuous citizens, who know the value of their birth-right, liberty, and who will not submit tamely to the chains of faction. Force will then be called in to the aid of corruption, a military government will be established on the ruins of the civil, and all commands and employments will be at the disposal of arbitrary, lawless power. The people will be fleeced to pay for their own fetters, and doomed, like the cattle, to unremitting toil and drudgery, for the support of their tyrannical masters.’ [All this is evidently erroneous, when we apply to it the touch-stone of the theory of population. The people are not fleeced and worked in this manner for the benefit of those who fleece and work them, to gratify any appetites or passions of theirs, it is out of pure good-will to the poor wretches themselves, that they may live more at their ease, and in a greater degree of affluence than they would without this timely warning of the evils of poverty.] ‘Or if the outward form of civil government should be permitted to remain, the people will be compelled to give a sanction to tyranny by their own suffrages, and to elect oppressors instead of protectors.—From this genuine portrait of the Roman state it is evident that the fatal catastrophe of that republic, of which Sallust himself was an eye-witness, was the natural effect of the corruption of their manners; and again, that this corruption was the effect of the introduction of foreign wealth and luxury. This fatal tendency was too obvious to escape the notice of those who had any regard for liberty and their ancient constitution. Many sumptuary laws were made to restrain the excesses of luxury; but these efforts were too feeble to check the over-bearing violence of the torrent. Cato proposed a severe law, enforced by the sanction of an oath, against bribery and corruption at elections; where the scandalous traffic of votes was established by custom, as at a public market. But he only incurred the resentment of both parties by that salutary measure. The rich, who had no other merit to plead but what arose from their superior wealth, thus found themselves precluded from all pretensions to the highest dignities. The electors abused, cursed and even pelted him as the author of a law which reduced them to the necessity of subsisting by labour. Corruption was arrived at its height, and those excesses which were formerly 88esteemed the vices of the people were now, by the force of custom, become the manners of the people. To pilfer the public money and to plunder the provinces by violence, though state crimes of the most heinous nature, were grown so familiar, that they were looked upon as no more than mere office perquisites.’ Really I am afraid that the reader will suspect me of falsifying the historical record to write a satire against our own times. Some of these remarks are I confess home truths. To a person who has not that mysterious kind of penetration which the author of the Essay possesses, they carry more weight, and give a clearer insight into the principles that operate in the decomposition of states, than all Mr. Malthus’s indiscriminate and shadowy reasonings on the evils of population, which can no more prove anything decisively on the subject, than we can account for the inequalities in the surface of the earth from its being round.

The same author adds, ‘Though there is a concurrence of several causes in the ruin of a state, yet where luxury prevails, that parent of all our fantastic wants, ever craving, and ever unsatisfied, we may safely assign it as the leading cause; since it ever was and ever will be the most baneful to public virtue. As luxury is contagious from its very nature, it will gradually descend from the highest to the lowest ranks till it has ultimately affected a whole people.—We see luxury gradually increasing and prevailing over the Roman spirit and virtue, till at length the contagion even reached ladies of the greatest distinction, who in imitation of the prince and his court, had their assemblies and representations in a grove, planted by the Emperor, where booths were built, and in them sold whatever incited to sensuality and wantonness. Thus was even the outward appearance of virtue banished the city, and all manner of avowed lewdness, depravity and dissoluteness introduced in its room, men and women being engaged in a contention to outvie each other in glaring vices, and scenes of impurity. Again.—About the time that the Roman republic was tottering to its fall, it was observed that there was an universal degeneracy of manners prevailing, particularly that the women were very scandalous in their behaviour at Rome, while those of the countries called by them barbarous were remarkably exemplary in this respect.’ Was this difference wholly owing to the difference in the state of population? Or shall we believe that the ladies of Roman knights, that the wives and daughters of Emperors, that the mistresses of those to whom the world was tributary, who scattered pearls and gold among their followers, who gave largesses of corn to the people, and entertained them at ten thousand tables at a time, who ate the tongues of peacocks and nightingales, and the brains of parrots, whose dogs were 89fed with the livers of geese, their horses with raisins, and their wild beasts with the flesh of partridges and pheasants, shall we believe that these delicate creatures, who dreamt of nothing but pleasure and feasting, who reclined on silken couches, whose baths were made of rose-water and wine, who scented the air with all the perfumes of the East, whose rich dresses were upborne by a train of waiting-women, and idle boys, were driven to the necessity of stimulating their passions by lewd exhibitions, and wanton dances, and lascivious songs, and soft music and obscene practices, because they were hindered from gratifying their honest desires in a lawful way by the difficulty of providing for their future offspring, or the pressure of population on the means of subsistence? Yet this is what we must be led to suppose from Mr. Malthus’s theory, according to whom vice is the natural consequence of want, and want the effect of increasing population. For any one who is acquainted with the state of manners, and the mode of living among the great at Rome at this time to pretend that all this was owing to nothing but the advanced state of population, just as the rising or falling of the weather-glass depends on the pressure of the air outside, betrays a most astonishing ignorance of human nature. I think I am warranted in laying down the two following maxims; that luxury is itself an immediate cause of dissoluteness of manners; secondly, that example, particularly that of the great, has a powerful influence over manners.

Before I quit this subject of Roman luxury, I shall just mention a fact quoted by my author, which seems to contradict Mr. Malthus’s notion that the luxuries of the rich do not in the least affect the condition of the poor. ‘The good Emperor Aurelius,’ says Burgh, ‘sold the plate, furniture, jewels, pictures and statues of the imperial palace, to relieve the distresses of the people, occasioned by the invasion of barbarians, pestilence, famine, &c. the value of which was so great, that it maintained the war for five years, beside other inestimable expences.’ If according to Mr. Malthus’s reasoning on this subject in different parts of his work, every man’s stomach can hold only a certain quantity of food, and what does not go into one man’s stomach necessarily goes into some other’s, that is, if every person has as large a share as it is possible he should have of the necessaries of life, I do not see what this moving of pictures or statues about, or setting them up to auction should have to do with the state of provisions, or how it should relieve the necessities of the poor. Mr. Malthus’s reasonings are sometimes as remarkable for their simplicity as they are at others for their complexity. He sees things in the most natural or in the most artificial point of view, as he pleases. At one time, every thing comes round by a labyrinth of 90causes, and all the intricate secretions of the state; at another time the whole science of political economy is reduced to a flat calculation of the size of a quartern loaf, and the size of the human stomach.

All authors (but Mr. Malthus) seem agreed that luxury has been fatal to the spirit of liberty, and that the loss of liberty has led to the loss of independence. ‘The welfare of every country depends upon the morals of the people. Though a nation may become rich by trade, thrift, and industry, or from the advantages of soil and situation, or may attain to great eminence and power either by force of arms, or by the sagacity of their councils; yet when their manners are depraved, they will decline insensibly, and at last come to utter destruction. When a country is grown vicious, industry decays, and the people become unruly, effeminate, and unfit for labour. Luxury, when introduced into free states, and suffered to spread through the body of the people was ever productive of that degeneracy of manners, which extinguishes public virtue, and puts a final period to liberty. Thus the Assyrian empire sunk under the arms of Cyrus with his poor but hardy Persians. The extensive and opulent empire of Persia fell an easy prey to Alexander and a handful of Macedonians. And the Macedonian empire, when enervated by the luxury of Asia, was compelled to receive the yoke of the victorious Romans. The descendants of the heroes, philosophers, orators, and free citizens of Greece are now the slaves of the Grand Turk. The posterity of the Scipios and Catos of Rome are now singing operas, in the shape of Italian eunuchs, on the English stage.’^[17] It should seem from the length of time which these countries have remained in the same degraded condition without a single effort or even wish to relieve themselves from it, that there must be other causes of the permanent depression of states, and other channels of transmission, by which the habits, and characters of the people, their customs and institutions, are handed down through successive generations without any hope of a change for the better, besides the mechanical fluctuations in the principle of population. If all laws, institutions, manners, and customs were only so many expressions (as I may say) of the power of that principle, kingdoms would rise and fall with the operation of the checks provided for it; their alternate renovation and decay would be as regular as the ebbing and flowing of the tide; in proportion as they sank deep in wretchedness, they would tower to greater happiness and splendour; the foundation of their future prosperity would be laid in the lowness of their fortune; the exhausted state would rise, like the phœnix, out of its own ashes, and enter the career of liberty and glory in all its pristine vigour. 91But we do not find that the accounts in history correspond with the oscillations of Mr. Malthus’s theory. We find through a long, dreary tract of time, during which our author’s ratios must have been ascending and descending like buckets in a well, that the inhabitants of those devoted countries have remained just where they were,—in the lowest scale of human being. They have for a great many hundred years been undergoing the wholesome discipline of vice and misery without being the better for it, the iron yoke of necessity to which they have so long and patiently submitted does not seem ever to have been relaxed in their favour, and they have reaped none of those reversionary benefits which might be expected from slavery and famine. These powerful principles have not done much to rekindle in their breasts their ancient love of liberty, the glow of genius,—or to open a new field for the rapid increase of population. They have not been favoured with any of those ups and downs, those pretty whirls and agreeable vicissitudes of good and evil, which Mr. Malthus describes as the natural consequence of the principles on which his machine of population is constructed. This is a radical objection to his machine; it shews plainly that it is not constructed on true principles, that we cannot safely trust ourselves in it, and will I hope deter us from getting up into it.

‘The Swiss keep the same unchanged character of simplicity, honesty, frugality, modesty, bravery. These are the virtues which preserve liberty. They have no corrupt court, no blood-sucking placemen, no standing army, the ready instruments of tyranny, no ambition for conquest, no debauching commerce, no luxury, no citadels against invasions and against liberty. Their mountains are their fortifications, and every householder is a soldier, ready to fight for his country.’ This is the account which Voltaire gives of that country. Since that time, it has fallen by a power greater than its own, and paid with its liberty for the folly and madness of the rest of Europe. I hope I shall not offend any of the sycophants of power, any of the enlightened patriots of the day who regard the general distinctions of liberty and slavery as slight and evanescent, by adding to my list of political grievances foreign conquest as an evil, and an evil that tends to no certain good.—I would fain know from the adepts in the science of population whether according to that system it would be an advantage to this country to be conquered by the French. The necessary ratios of the increase of food and population (which according to our author are every thing,—he utterly rejects the idea that established governments can do any mischief) would of course remain the same; and as to the practical part, population would, if any thing, go on slower than before. I cannot but think 92however that most of my readers would in such a case anticipate the consequences which our political reformer describes in his croaking old-fashioned way as proceeding from another cause, the corruption of the people, and the abuses of government at home. ‘I see’ he says, ‘my wretched country in the same condition as France is now.’ [This was written at a time when it was the fashion for the English to reproach all other countries for their misery and slavery, as they have since been in the habit of hunting them down for their attempts at liberty.] ‘Instead of the rich and thriving farmers, who now fill or who lately filled, the country with agriculture, yielding plenty for man and beast, I see the lands neglected, the villages and farms in ruins, with here and there a starveling in wooden shoes, driving his plough, his team consisting of an old goat, a hide-bound bullock, and an ass, value in all forty shillings. I see the once rich and populous cities of England in the same condition with those of Spain; whole streets lying in rubbish, and the grass peeping out between the stones in those which continue still inhabited. I see the harbours empty, the warehouses shut up, and the shop-keepers playing at draughts, for want of customers. I see our noble and spacious turnpike roads covered with thistles and other weeds, and hardly to be traced out. I see the studious men reading the Political Disquisitions, and the histories of the eighteenth century, and execrating the stupidity of their fathers, who in spite of the many faithful warnings given them, sat still, and suffered their country to be ruined by a set of wretches, whom they could have crushed. I see the country devoured by an army of 200,000 men. I see justice trodden under foot in the courts of justice. I see Magna Charta, the Habeas Corpus act, the bill of rights, and trial by jury, obsolete, and royal edicts and arrets set up in their place. I see the once respectable land-owners, tradesmen, and manufacturers of England sunk into contempt, and placemen and military officers the only persons of consequence, &c.’ I do not know but there may be some staunch adherents to the new philosophy, some hyper-graduates in the school, who would think such a state of things ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished.’ But it is happy that where our reason leaves us, our prejudices often come to our aid. Though there may be some persons in this country who would not care a fig for the Bastile, or letters de cachet, there is no one who has not a just dread of Buonaparte; or who would not indignantly spurn at the wretch who told him that so long as the disproportion in the increase of food and the increase of mankind continued, it was of little consequence to him whether he was subject to the yoke of a foreign tyrant, or governed by a mild and lawful sovereign.—It has always been the custom for the English to extol 93themselves to the skies as the freest and happiest nation on the face of the earth. Ever since I was a boy, I remember to have heard of the trial by jury, Magna Charta, and the bill of rights, of the Bastile in France, and the Inquisition in Spain, and the man in the Iron mask. Now whether it is that I was a boy when I first heard of these things, or that they carry some weight and meaning in themselves, certain it is that they have made such a strong and indelible impression on my mind as totally to preclude the effects of Mr. Malthus’s philosophy. Whether it is owing to the strength of my reason or my prejudices, I cannot receive the benefit of his new light. As these are some of the strongest feelings I have, (though they may perhaps be just as childish as those which I still have in reading the story of Goody Two-Shoes, or the Little Red Riding-hood) it occurred to me to make some use of them in answer to Mr. Malthus’s challenge to shew that there is no difference between one government and another in the essentials of liberty and happiness. Or I thought I might contrast the constitution of this country with that of Denmark, where (says Lord Molesworth) the peasants are as absolute slaves as the negroes in Jamaica, and worse fed. This seemed to be strong ground. But then I recollected that the very same expression had been applied by a person, whom it would be unbecoming in me to contradict, to the peasants in this country.^[18] I also met with a passage something to the same purpose in the Political Disquisitions, which a little damped my patriotic eagerness. ‘A poor hard-working man, who has a wife and six children to maintain’ [what a wicked wretch!] ‘can neither enjoy the glorious light of heaven, nor the glimmering of a farthing candle, without paying the window tax and the candle tax. He rises early and sits up late; he fills the whole day with severe labour; he goes to his flock-bed with half a belly-full of bread and cheese denying the call of natural appetite, that his wife and little starvelings may have the more.’ [Why he is very justly punished to be sure. True; but mark the sequel.] ‘In the mean while the exactors of these taxes are revelling at the expence of more money for one evening’s amusement, than the wretched hard-working man (who is obliged to find the money for them to squander) can earn by half a year’s severe labour.’ On the whole, I was obliged to relinquish my 94project. I found that my picture must either want effect, or be out of all keeping. And besides the relations of things had not only changed, but men’s opinions had changed with them. An overcharged description of English liberty and continental slavery would not be at all to the taste of the times. It would sound like mere rant, and would come to nothing. But when I came to that fine representation of the effects of slavery, which Burgh has left us, with those exquisite figures of the old goat, the bullock and the ass, and the group of shop-keepers playing at draughts for want of something to do, I was determined to bring it in, cost what it would. At last, I bethought me of the expedient of an invasion,—at that word I knew that every true friend of his country would grow pale, would see the odious consequences of slavery in their native deformity, and turn with disdain from those vile panders to vice and misery, those sanguine enthusiasts of mischief, who would artfully reconcile them to every species of want, oppression, and unfeeling barbarity, as the necessary consequences of the principle of population. So much more credit do we attach to names, than things!—The whole of the account of Denmark to which I have just referred, is well worthy of attention: I cannot forbear giving the following extract. ‘The consequence of this oppression is that the people of Denmark finding it impossible to secure their property’ [from the tax-gatherers] ‘squander their little gettings, as fast as they can, and are irremediably poor. Oppression and arbitrary sway beget distrust and doubts about the security of property; doubts beget profusion, men chusing to squander on their pleasures what they apprehend may excite the rapaciousness of their superiors; and this profusion is the legitimate parent of that universal indolence, poverty and despondency, which so strongly characterize the miserable inhabitants of Denmark. When Lord Molesworth resided in that country, the collectors of the poll-tax were obliged to accept of old feather-beds, brass and pewter pans, &c. instead of money, from the inhabitants of a town, which once raised 200,000 rix dollars for Christiern IV. on twenty-four hours’ notice. The quartering and paying the king’s troops is another grievance no less oppressive. The boors are obliged to furnish the king and every little insolent courtier with horses and waggons in their journeys, and are beaten like cattle. Consequently, Denmark, once very populous, is become thin of inhabitants; as poverty, oppression, and meagre diet do miserably check procreation, besides producing diseases which shorten the lives of the few who are born.’ [How miserably short-sighted must our author have been not to perceive that these were great advantages!] ‘All this the rich and thriving and free people of England may bring themselves to, if they 95please’ [by following up Mr. Malthus’s theory.] ‘It is only letting the court go on with their scheme of diffusing universal corruption through all ranks, and it will come of course.’—There is one passage in this account, which malevolence itself cannot apply to the history of this country. ‘Before the government of Denmark was made hereditary and absolute in the present royal family, by that fatal measure in 1660, the nobility lived in great splendour and affluence. Now they are poor and their number diminished.’

I shall conclude these extracts with the following passages, taken at random, which will at least serve to shew the strange prejudices that prevailed on the subject, before Mr. Malthus, like the clown in Shakespear, undertook to find out an answer that should explain all difficulties. ‘It must indeed be an answer of most monstrous size that fits all demands.’ But perhaps Mr. Malthus is by this time convinced, that ‘a thing may serve long, and not serve ever.’

‘The richest soil in Europe, Italy, is full of beggars; among the Grisons, the poorest country in Europe, there are no beggars. The bailage of Lugane is the worst country, the least productive, the most exposed to cold and the least capable of trade of any in all Italy, and yet is the best peopled. If ever this country is brought under a yoke like that which the rest of Italy bears, it will soon be abandoned, for nothing draws so many people to live in so bad a soil, when they are in sight of the best soil in Europe, but the easiness of the government.’ Burnet’s Travels.

‘Italy shews, in a very striking light, the advantages of free government.^[19] The subjects of the Italian republics are thriving and happy. Those under the Pope, the dukes of Tuscany, Florence &c. wretched in the extreme.—Lucca, to mention no other, is a remarkable instance of the happy effects of liberty. The whole dominion is but thirty miles round, yet contains, besides the city, 150 villages, 120,000 inhabitants, and all the soil is cultivated to the utmost. Their magistrates are re-elected every two months out of a body of nobility, who are chosen every two years.’ Modern Universal History. See also A. Sydney as before quoted.—These differences cannot be accounted for by the length of time or the force with which the principle of population has operated in these states. The countries are equally old, and the climate very nearly the same.

‘In England an industrious subject has the best chance for thriving, because the country is the freest. In the Mogul’s 96dominions the worst, because the country is the most effectually enslaved.’

‘The title of freemen was formerly confined chiefly to the nobility and gentry, who were descended of free ancestors. For the greatest part of the people was restrained under some species of slavery, so that they were not their own masters.’ Spelman’s Glossary.^[20]—On this passage my author remarks very gravely, ‘What has been in England may be again. If liberty be on the decline, no one knows how low it may sink, and to what pitch of slavery and cruelty it may grow.’ Mr. Malthus’s theory tends to familiarise the mind to such a change as the necessary effect of the progress of population. But this pretext is here clearly done away, as we have fought up to our present free, and flourishing state, in the teeth of this principle. Our progress has not been uniformly retrograde, as it ought to have been to make any thing of the argument.

‘It is constantly (said a member in Queen Elizabeth’s time) in the mouths of us all, that our lands, goods and laws are at our prince’s disposal.’ We do not at present come quite up to the loyalty of this speaker.

‘Nations have often been deceived into slavery by men of shining abilities.’ Perhaps the late Mr. Burke was an instance of this. I by no means insist that he was, because there may be differences of opinion on that point. But of this I am sure, that the effect of his writings, good or bad, cannot be measured—by the principle of population.

‘A single genius changes the face and state of a whole country, as Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, and Peter the great of Russia. Confucius produced a reformation in one of the oriental kingdoms in a few months.’

‘Commerce introduced by the czar Peter introduced luxury. Universal dissipation took the lead, and profligacy of manners succeeded. Many of the lords began to squeeze and grind the peasants 97to extort fresh supplies from them for the incessant demands of luxury’—not of population.

‘The extreme poverty occasioned by idleness and luxury in the beginning of Lewis XIII. of France filled the streets of Paris with beggars. The court disgusted at the sight, which indeed was a severe reproach on them, issued an order, forbidding all persons, on severe penalties, to relieve them, intending thereby to drive them out of the town, and not caring though they dropped down dead, before they could reach the country towns and villages.’ This was a project worthy of the genius of Mr. Malthus.

‘Government, according to Plato, is the parent of manners. One judicious regulation will often produce a very salutary effect on a whole people, as experimental philosophy shews us, that a wire will secure a castle from the once irresistible force of lightning.—Mankind may be brought to hold any principles and to indulge any practices, and again to give them up.—Is there any notion of right and wrong, about which mankind are universally agreed? Is it not evident that mankind may be moulded into any shape? How come we to know that antimony or quicksilver may, by chemical processes, be made to pass through twenty different states, and restored again to their original state? Is it not by experiment? Are not the various legislations, institutions, regulations of wise or designing statesmen, priests, and kings, a series of experiments, shewing that human nature is susceptible of any form or character?’ According to the most modern discovery, these things never did, nor ever will have any effect at all. The question is simply whether the state of food and the state of population being the same, the different causes here alluded to have not produced very different results with respect to the degree both of vice and misery existing in the world.^[21]

‘The great difference we see between the behaviour of the people called Quakers, and all others; between English, Scotch, Irish, French, Spanish, Heathens, Mahometan, Christian, Popish, Protestant manners and characters, &c. the regular and permanent difference we see between the manners of all these divisions of mankind, shews beyond all doubt that the principles and habits of the people are very much in the power of able statesmen.’

‘Among the Lacedemonians there was no such crime as infidelity to the marriage-bed: yet Lycurgus in framing his laws had used no precaution against it, but the virtuous and temperate education he prescribed for the youth of both sexes.—The influence which education has on 98the manners of a people is so considerable that it cannot be estimated. But by education it is to be observed, we must understand not only what is taught at schools and universities, but the impressions young people receive from parents, and from the world, which greatly outweigh all that can be done by masters and tutors. Education, taken in this enlarged sense, is almost all that makes the difference between the characters of nations; and it is a severe satire on our times, that the world makes most young men very different beings from what those who educated them intended them to be.’ This last remark is I think of the utmost force and importance; and has never been sufficiently attended to by those who prate most fluently and triumphantly about the inherent perversity of human nature. A young man is seldom tainted by the world, till he becomes dependent on it. I have known several persons who I am sure have set out in life with the utmost purity of intention, and a noble ingenuousness of mind, and were prepared to act on very different principles from those, which they found prevailing in the world. Is the fault in this case in the wood, or in the carver? Is it in the stuff, or in the mould, in which it is cast? The difficulty seems to be, how to get a better mould.

‘Aristotle lays down very strict rules concerning the company young people may be allowed to keep, the public diversions they may attend; the pictures they may see, and against obscenity, intemperance, &c. And the eighth book of his politics is employed wholly on education, in which he shews, that youth ought to be strongly impressed with the idea of their being members of a community, whose good they are to prefer to their private advantage in all cases where they come in competition. He commends the wisdom of the Spartans in paying such attention to this great object. Such is the delicacy of this old Heathen, that he hesitates about the propriety of young men’s applying to music, as being likely to enervate the mind.’

‘Lycurgus did not allow the Spartans to travel, lest they should be tainted by the manners of other nations.’ I do not chuse to name all the vices that have been imported into this country within the last fifty years by the aid of foreign travel. Vice is unfortunately of a very tenacious quality, and there is no quarantine against the epidemics of the mind. In return, however, we have learned to converse, to dress, and dance better than we used to do.

‘At Sparta, the poets could not publish any thing without a license; and all immoral writings were prohibited. A very wise man^[22] said he believed, if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who made the laws of a nation. The ancient legislators did 99not pretend to reform the manners of the people without the help of the poets.’

‘The grave Romans did not allow a person of character to dance! It was a saying among them, no one dances unless he is drunk or mad.’

‘In the old English laws, we find punishments for wanton behaviour, as touching the breasts of women, &c.—By the ancient laws of France, the least indecency of behaviour to a free woman, as squeezing the hand, touching the arm or breast, &c. was punishable by fire.’^[23] What odd, sour, crabbed notions must have prevailed in those days! Not squeeze a lady’s hand! No—a much more agreeable latitude of behaviour is allowed at present: we are as much improved in our notions of gallantry as of liberty. The polite reader will not suspect me of a design to hold up the shocking manners of our ancestors as models of imitation in the present day; I only mention them to shew what a wide difference there may be in the notions of decency and propriety at different times!

If a stranger, on entering a large town, London for example, should be struck with that immense number of prostitutes, ‘who elbow us aside in all our crowded streets,’ and not well knowing how to account for this enormous abuse, should apply to a disciple of the modern school for some explanation of it, he would probably be told with great gravity, That it was a necessary consequence of the progress of population, and the superior power of that principle over the increase in the means of subsistence.—If Mr. Malthus, contented to follow in the track of common sense, and not smitten with the love of dangerous novelty, had endeavoured to trace the torrent of vice and dissipation which threatens to bear down every principle of virtue and decency among us to the chief sources pointed out by other writers, to the particular institutions of society, to the prevalence of luxury, the inequality of conditions, the facility of gratifying the passions from the power of offering temptation, and inducements to accept it, the disproportion between the passions excited in individuals, and their situation in life, to books, to education, the progress of arts, the influence of neighbouring example, &c. these are all causes, which, as they are arbitrary and variable, seem as if they could be counteracted or modified by other causes; they are the work of man, and what is the work of man it seems in the power of man to confirm or alter. We see distinctly the source of the grievance, and try to remedy it: hope remains, the will acts with double energy, the spirit of virtue is not broken. Our vices grow out of other vices, out of our own passions, prejudices, folly, and weakness: there is nothing in this to make us proud of them, or to reconcile us to them; even though we 100may despair, we are not confounded. We still have the theory of virtue left: we are not obliged to give up the distinction between good and evil even in imagination: there is some little good which we may at least wish to do. Man in this case retains the character of a free agent; he stands chargeable with his own conduct, and a sense of the consequences of his own presumption or blindness may arouse in him feelings that may in some measure counteract their worst effects; he may regret what he cannot help: the life, the pulse, the spring of morality is not dead in him; his moral sense is not quite extinguished. But our author has chosen to stagger the minds of his readers by representing vice and misery as the necessary consequences of an abstract principle, of a fundamental law of our nature, on which nothing can be effected by the human will. This principle follows us wherever we go; if we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth, it is there: whether we turn to the right or the left, we cannot escape from it. O rather for that warning voice, that once cried aloud, Insensés qui vous plaignez, sans cesse de la nature, apprenez que tous vos maux vous viennent de vous! As however I deny the sufficiency of our author’s all-pervading principle, I may be required to point out more particularly what I conceive to be the real and determining causes of the decay of manners. I do not know that I can mention any that do not come under the heads already alluded to, but if I must give a short answer, I should say,—Great towns, great schools, dress, and novels. These things are not regulated exactly by the size of the earth, and yet must be allowed to have some influence on manners. To instance only the two last. Is it to be wondered at that a young raw ignorant girl, who is sent up from the country as a milliner’s or mantua-maker’s apprentice, and stowed into a room with eight or ten others, who snatch every moment they can spare from caps and bonnets, and sit up half the night to read all the novels they can get, and as soon they have finished one, send for another, whose heart, in the course of half a year, has been pierced through with twenty beaux on paper, who has been courted, seduced, run away with, married and put to bed under all the fine names that the imagination can invent to as many fine gentlemen, who has sighed and wept with so many heroes and heroines that her tears and sighs have at last caused in her a defluction of the brain, and a palpitation of the heart at the sight of every man, whose fancy is love-sick, and her head quite turned, should be unable to resist the first coxcomb of real flesh and blood, who in shining boots and a velvet collar accosts her in the shape of a lover, but who has no thoughts of marrying her, because if he were to take this imprudent step, he must give up his shining boots and velvet collar, 101and the respect they procure him in the world? Zaleucus ordained that no woman should dress herself gorgeously, unless she was a prostitute. If I were a law-giver, and chose to meddle in such matters, I would ordain that no woman should expose her shape publicly, unless she were a prostitute.—The female form is more proper for child-bearing, than for public exhibition; this secret analogy, when coupled with modesty and reserve, is however its greatest charm. The strange fancy-dresses, the perverse disguises, the counterfeit shapes, the stiff stays, and enormous hoops worn by the women in the time of the Spectator gave an agreeable scope to the imagination. The greedy eye and rash hand of licentiousness were repressed. The senses were never satisfied in an instant. Love was entangled in the folds of the swelling handkerchief, and the desires might wander for ever round the circumference of a quilted petticoat, or find a rich lodging in the flowers of a damask stomacher. There was room for years of patient perseverance, for a thousand thoughts, fancies, conjectures, hopes, fears, and wishes. There seemed no end to difficulties and delays: to overcome so many obstacles was the work of ages. A wife had then some meaning in it: it was an angel concealed behind whalebone, flounces, and brocade. The transition from a mistress in masquerade to a wife in wedding sheets was worth venturing for: now it is nothing, and we hear no more of faithful courtships, and romantic loves. A woman can be but undressed.—The young ladies we at present see with the thin muslin vest drawn tight round the slender waist, and following with nice exactness the undulations of the shape downwards, disclosing each full swell, each coy recess, obtruding on the eye each opening charm, the play of the muscles, the working of the thighs, and by the help of a walk, of which every step seems a gird, and which keeps the limbs strained to the utmost point, displaying all those graceful involutions of person, and all those powers of fascinating motion, of which the female form is susceptible—these moving pictures of lust and nakedness, against which the greasy imaginations of grooms and porters may rub themselves, running the gauntlet of the saucy looks and indecent sarcasms of the boys in the street, staring at every ugly fellow, leering at every handsome man, and throwing out a lure for every fool (true Spartan girls, who if they were metamorphosed into any thing in the manner of Ovid, it would certainly be into valerian!) are the very same, whose mothers or grand-mothers buried themselves under a pile of clothes, whose timid steps hardly touched the ground, whose eyes were constantly averted from the rude gaze of the men, and who almost blushed at their own shadows. ‘Of such we in romances read.’ It does not require any great spirit of divination to 102perceive that this change in appearance must imply some change in manners. Is this change then owing entirely to the increased pressure of the principle of population, or have not French fashions, French milliners, and French dancing-masters had some hand in producing it?^[24]—Mr. Malthus inveighs with great severity against squalid poverty, and the vices produced by filth and rags. I allow the justice of his remarks, and think that the condition of the poor in this respect is one of the chief nuisances of society. After giving the poor a scrubbing with a coarse towel in the manner he has done, it would not have been amiss if he had taken a clean white clerical pocket-handkerchief, and applied it to wipe off the rouge from the cheeks of painted prostitution, or thrown it as a covering over the polished neck and ivory shoulders of ladies of high quality. The bishop of London would have praised the attempt. Mr. Malthus might have distinguished between the involuntary rents, and the unlucky loop-holes which sometimes appear in a poor girl’s petticoat, and the elegant dishabille and studied nakedness of high life. The dirt that sticks to a wench’s face in cleaning a saucepan is I think likely to have less effect on the character than the red paste daubed on the cheeks before a looking-glass, to give animation to the eyes. The contempt which dirt and poverty excite must destroy all moral sensibility. Must not the glare of fashion and the perpetual intoxication of personal vanity have the same effect? The poor grovel in disagreeable sensations, the rich wanton in voluptuous ones. The passions are not more likely to be inflamed by stale porter, the screams of a fiddle, and the clattering of a hornpipe at a hop in St. Giles’s, than by the elegant liqueurs, the soft sounds of the clarionet and hautboy, and the languishing movements of walses, allemandes, and minuets de la cour at a ball in St. James’s. A fair, or an opera may equally turn the head of any silly girl that goes to one. Of the two, a tune on the salt-box would be got over sooner than Narcissus and the Graces. The tawdry prints to be seen in garrets, and the ballads sung at the corners of streets do not much improve the morals of the people: but I put it to the conscience of our sentimental divine, whether the Wanton Wife of Bath, or the tall captain with his arm round the chambermaid’s waist, or Jemmy Jessamy lolling on the sofa with his mistress, may be expected to produce more accidents than those luscious collections of the poets, or those grave scripture-pieces, or classical chef-d’œuvres of Venus and 103Adonis, of Leda with her Swan, Nymphs, Fawns, and Satyrs, which gentlemen of fortune keep in their houses for the instruction of their wives and daughters. Mr. Malthus is convinced that no young woman brought up in nastiness and vulgarity, however virtuous she may seem, can be good for any thing at twenty: I confess I have the same cynical opinion of those, who have the good fortune to be brought up in the obscene refinements of fashionable life.