it has been just represented, (though improvement is rapidly spreading); and that it affords a striking illustration of the truth of the first part of the alternative in my second proposition, (see chapter iii.) in which the pressure of population against the actual means of subsistence is ascribed to grossly impolitic or pernicious laws, or customs, accelerating the progress of population considerably beyond its natural rate. The most intelligent and patriotic among her own natives are certainly of this opinion, and are bending all their efforts towards the introduction of a superior cast of habits and modes of thinking. One of them, the Reverend Horatio Townshend, author of a Statistical Survey of the County of Cork, executed in a manner by no means inferior to the best of our Scottish and English reports to the Board of Agriculture, specifically states the grand disiderata (among others) to be "to make the tradesmen drink less and behave better;-to make an idle gentry better farmers and worse sportsmen ;-to exchange bad ploughs for good ones;-to remove dirt holes from the doors of the lower orders, and put panes in their windows;-to enlighten their minds, to enlarge their scanty stock of ideas, to diminish their bigotry, and to remove their prejudices." In short, he urges with irresistible force, that the remedy must be sought in the encouragement of industry and education among all ranks, in a strict and regular administration of justice, in stimulating the activity, advancing the skill, and increasing the comforts of the slovenly rustics, in promoting employment for an increasing population by the advancement of agriculture, by new manufactories, or the improvement of those which exist. This is the way pointed out-and I

4

shall hope to find an opportunity, before the close of this Treatise, to say something of the means by which it may be successfully pursued.

It is now, I trust, upon the whole abundantly manifest that, in the more advanced stages of society treated of in this chapter, although the powers of production yet remaining in the soil are continually decreasing, yet the natural tendency of population to press against the supply of food is also decreasing in a still greater ratio; at least, in all countries where due attention is paid to religion, morals, and rational liberty. Whereas in countries where these duties and privileges are neglected or forgotten, the principle of population is diverted from its natural tendency, and numbers do actually press against the existing supply of food, on the one hand from the artificial acceleration in the procreation of the people, arising out of premature marriages among couples ill provided with the necessaries and comforts of life, and on the other from the depression of the productive energies of the soil below its natural powers, arising from vicious government and the discouragement of industry.

We have then several of the fundamental propositions of this treatise here distinctly asserted, and proved, with reference to the more advanced stages of society.

1. Population has a natural tendency to keep within the powers of the soil to afford it subsistence; because we see that where those powers are most called forth by industry and good government, and consequently approach most nearly to exhaustion, there the population presses least against them; while, on the other hand, where the powers of the

soil are permitted to lie most dormant by idleness, vice, and evil government, and consequently when the land has yet the largest resources left to unfold, there population presses most against them. The converse of which propositions must be true, if my first fundamental principle be false.

2. But, although in every country we find that the tendency of the population to keep within the powers of the soil to produce further food, (as proved by the first and admitted in the second proposition,) is fully established; yet as vice and bad government may check the progress of population in some degree, but will usually check industry and cultivation more, the pressure of the first against the actual supply of food in illgoverned and immoral communities generally arises from the unnatural depression of the powers of the soil, according to the second part of the alternative stated in my second proposition. But as this deterioration in society, when once established, demoralizes the people, and deprives them of their taste for the decencies and conveniences of life, it may, as in some parts of Ireland, in Sicily, Spain, &c. introduce the custom of premature marriages among the lower orders; which will have a tendency to accelerate the progress of population beyond the means of subsistence, which apathy and relaxed industry can now supply. This again produces, as we have seen, a pressure against the actual supply of food by the means stated in the first part of the alternative of the second proposition. (See chap. iii.)

3. But as we have moreover seen that, in moral and well-governed states, "whose laws and customs. are founded in the main on religion, morality, rational liberty, and security of person and property,

although they may be far from approaching to what is altogether desirable in these respects, the people are well supplied with food from inferior land, although they are rapidly increasing in numbers; while in illgoverned states they are ill supplied with food from superior land, although not increasing in numbers at all; we may conclude, according to my third fundamental proposition, that, in the first mentioned countries, the tendency of population to keep within the powers of the soil will never be materially altered, or diverted from its natural course.

4. Few persons will probably deny the truth of my fourth proposition as a necessary consequence of those which have preceded it. It is, however, more a matter of argument and comparison than of positive proof from facts: and as it is conversant rather with the most advanced stages of society, treated of in the following chapter, than with those we have just been discussing, the consideration of it may as well be postponed to a subsequent page.

CHAPTER VII.

Of the natural Tendency of Population in the most advanced Stages of Society.

NOTWITHSTANDING the arguments detailed in the preceding chapters, it is still evident, that if a community, conducting itself even upon the most reasonable principles, is indefinitely to continue increasing in population, in however retarded a ratio, it must at length come to the end of its resources in food; the land being an absolute quantity, and only capable, when most fully cultivated, of making a definite return. Remote and improbable as this contingency may be, and without any sanction from history or experience, still there is nothing absurd or impossible upon the face of it; and its eventual arrival would certainly impeach the truth of the first and principal fundamental proposition of this treatise, "that population has a natural tendency to keep within the powers of the soil to afford it subsistence in every gradation through which society passes." In order therefore to establish the universal truth of this proposition, I have a farther task yet to perform, which is the object of this chapter: and it is thus that with some confidence I venture upon the proof; premising, however, that as no nation was ever found with its soil cultivated to the utmost, the reasoning in this chapter is introduced more for the sake of answering an hypothetical but plausible argument, which appears to me to arraign the wisdom and goodness of Providence, than with any such view to