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junction of four ways. In a country where few people travel a thief has little chance of passengers unless where two ways cross." (P. 294.) They had once a canal made by Philip V. seven leagues in length, which brought to them the waters of the Jarama; but about twenty years ago the head proved faulty, and it has never been repaired. The loss (of produce) by this misfortune and neglect is almost inestimable." They have no other implements of tillage except ploughs, being perfect strangers to the use of harrows. It must be evident to every one who has the least knowledge of the subject, that no plough can be worse adapted to the soil."

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Thus much for the state of the country and of its agriculture and industry. Let us now inquire into that of the towns and their trade and manufactures. (Vol. ii. p. 8.) Beggars, clothed with rags and covered with vermin, swarm in every street." (Vol. iii. p. 70.) "As for the manufactures, they are going to decay, and feel more than the common infirmities of age, receiving at best little encouragement from local situation, and being depressed and ruined by want of political wisdom in the government," &c. Many laws were published, laying restraints on manufacturers, subjecting them to formalities and to vexatious fines, and fixing the price at which their manufactures should be sold. As a compensation the price of provisions was likewise fixed. But as the latter tended to hurt the market and to depress the farmer, so the operation of the former was to depress the quality of the goods, and to bring slow yet certain ruin on the manufacturer, under the absurd

idea of favouring the consumer. The want of political wisdom has been here equally fatal to agriculture,

manufactures, and commerce." (P. 183.) "Previous to the appointment of Don Francisco Pachecho to the government of Alicant, the city swarmed all day with beggars, and all night with prostitutes and thieves. These were fed by the religious houses," &c." (P. 251.) "I was struck with the sight of poverty, of wretchedness, and of rags, in every street." (P. 17.) "With such encouragement for beggars no wonder that they should abound in Malaga, where the lazy can have no inducement to employ themselves in labour, and where the profligate, when they shall have wasted their substance, may know for a certainty that they shall never be in want of bread. Hence it comes to pass that in the city few traces of industry are seen, whilst filth and nastiness, immorality and vice, wretchedness and poverty, the inevitable consequences of undistinguishing benevolence, prevail."-" Multitudes of beggars infesting every street mark a bad police."-" For some time I could not conceive the reason why, wherever I had supped, I was constantly attended to my lodging by a servant with a light. But observing, upon some occasion, that such attendance would be needless, I was informed that the servant and the light were not merely for comfort but for safety, because robberies and murders were frequent in the night. Indeed when I was there, an officer returning unattended to his lodging was assaulted in the street by thieves, and upon making resistance was stabbed in the back by one, while another robbed him. In the last sixteen months they reckoned seventy murders, for which not one criminal had been brought to justice, and in one year, as I am credibly informed, 105 persons fell in the same manner."

The enlightened and candid reader of these passages will find no difficulty in discovering the cause, why in Spain, possessing less than half its complement of population, the people are yet half-starved. Nor will he consider any reference to the principle of population, as the cause of this distress, extremely applicable to the case in question. He will, however, perceive in the great towns and crowded villages of Spain at once the magnificent wreck and the proofs of its former grandeur and prosperity; but in the filth, and misery, and vice of those towns, and in the scanty yet redundant population of the villages, and the desolate state of the fertile lands, he will discover the causes yet more clearly than the proofs of its present decline. Perhaps there cannot be a more general or convincing proof of a declining commonwealth, than the co-existence of large towns and a low state of agriculture;-the former being, in the natural order of things, absolutely the offspring of a full cultivation, their very existence without it is a proof that their vices and their crimes have destroyed their parent, at the period when, having nursed them to maturity, it might fairly have expected the return of assistance now become necessary to its old age; and the wretched condition of their orphan state constitutes their just reward. A future opportunity of illustrating this point more fully will occur with reference to the modern state of China.In the mean time it may be observed that, in this picture of the state of Spain, we again perceive the necessary effects of a vicious interference with the obvious designs of Providence for the advancement of society. Instead of answering the selfish purposes for which it was intended, or of rendering the natural

order of things compatible with immorality and oppression, by keeping affairs quiet while they are calling aloud for reformation;-we find that the very expedients, resorted to for these purposes, produce a pressure thrice as heavy as that which they were intended to remove. It seems also to follow, both as a natural consequence, and as the result of historical experience, that this pressure will increase in intensity till it can no longer be borne, but must either crush the people, or rouse them with the energies of despair to cast it from themselves on their oppressors. This alternative may be most emphatically said to be presented to the choice of the unfortunate people of Spain at the present moment, (January 1816).

That the truth of the premises laid down in this Chapter cannot fairly be disputed, is presumed with some confidence. The facts on which they rest seem too obvious to require any further confirmation from the aid of history. That the newly settled lands in America raise and export a surplus produce of food, although their population is doubled in the shortest possible period, will probably be admitted without reference to their statistical writers to prove it. That in those states which have been settled for a longer period, the people having collected into towns export less of their produce, and do not increase in so rapid a ratio, will also be admitted. Yet as they still export some produce, their whole population cannot actually press against the whole of their means of subsistence. For it is evident that this effect cannot be produced by any general law of nature, till we find a want subsisting in the community for imported food, or for a further produce from their own territory ;-a condition of society which belongs to the following

Chapter. The fact therefore that food is still habitually exported may suffice, instead of any historical illustration, to prove that the means, by which the progress of population is naturally regulated in the states of society treated of in this Chapter, are sufficient still to preserve it within the limits of the actual supply of food, which was first raised in the purely agricultural state.

We will proceed then to apply very briefly to this portion of the argument the fundamental principles stated at the outset of the treatise, (vide ch. iii.)— Population being, throughout the whole course treated in this chapter, preserved within the limits of the actual supply of food, it is evident that every conclusion tends clearly to establish the two first principles. For, first, population cannot exceed the powers of the soil to afford it subsistence, so long as a large surplus of food is actually derived from that soil; nor, secondly, can the existence of such surplus consist with a mischievous pressure of population against the actual supply of food. With respect to the third and fourth principles, which are conversant principally with the conduct and condition of individuals, there can be no doubt but that the folly of a government, or the vices of the people, may introduce much want and misery notwithstanding the overflowing state of the national resources. The political constitution of the United States of America, leading to anarchy and idleness among some of the lower ranks, and the recent political conduct of their government, have actually introduced into that country a baneful interference with the comfort and happiness of many orders of society. I doubt not that some excellent individuals are to be found among them; but to an English