CHAPTER VI.

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

IN the progress of society, beyond the stages treated in the preceding Chapter, population will at length overtake the supply of surplus food, so far as . to press lightly against some of the luxuries to which it is converted, and will raise its price. And this is the first point, from the earliest states of society, in which the pretended universal aphorism, that population has a tendency to press against its actual supply of food, can be said even remotely to apply.

The elevation in the price of produce, from the increased competition, now encourages the capitalist to divest part of his funds from commerce and manufactures to the cultivation of inferior waste lands, or to agricultural improvements on those already cultivated. Let it carefully be observed, that this preexisting demand for food from a population pressing against the superfluities of its supply, (if I may be allowed the expression), is the only possible mode by which a farther increase can now be elicited from the soil. For cultivators will not lay out their capital upon land of an inferior staple, until they find, by an enhanced price of its produce, that there is an increasing demand for it to compensate their additional expenses: a fact which appears of itself sufficient to show the futility of the idea entertained by Mr. Malthus and others, that a manufacturing nation can ever permanently export large quantities of corn. This speculation indeed, implies the apparent absurdity of sup.

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posing that a commodity raised by one nation at a great expense, and sent abroad to a foreign market, can be sold there to a profit (expenses of carriage included), notwithstanding the competition of other nations, who can raise the same commodity at less than half the expense, and convey it to the same market with very inferior charges of freight. Neither is the fact stated more favourable to the position of the same economists, that an increase of people should always follow, and never precede, an increase in the produce of the soil:which, when applied to a manufacturing society, appears to be nearly tantamount to saying, that an increase in the number of backs should always follow, and never precede, an increase in the manufacture of coats;-whereas surely a previous increase of wearers and consumers is absolutely necessary to the respective production of further food and raiment.

These questions will be more fully treated in a subsequent chapter, when we come to the consideration of the nature of Corn Laws. In the mean time

it

may be observed, that the produce of these new speculations in agriculture will set the people at ease till a further increase of population. But the improved methods, such as the consolidation of small farms into larger, ingenious implements, &c. will also enable a smaller number of cultivators to raise an equal quantity of produce, and will therefore set free a larger proportion of the people for manufactures and other occupations.* This new arrangement will

* These natural effects of the progress of society may serve to allay the anger of many very honest and plain spoken political œconomists against large farms, and other arrangements for obtaining such a surplus and disposable produce, as is absolutely requisite to the public good in the new distribution of the society.

also add to the number of people inhabiting towns: while the accumulation of capital and of private fortunes, the increase of menial servants, and the vari ous calls for men who are in situations and pursuits of risk, danger, and the like, will add greatly to the list of those who do not reproduce their own numbers even in the country. So that it is only after a longer interval than before, that the people again come to press against the supply of food. Thus an increased retardation takes place at every stage in the progress of society. The difficulty of procuring food will evidently increase with each of these revolutions; because the country will, after each, have approached nearer to its acme of cultivation and production; and the best remaining lands being occupied at each revolution, none but inferior and ungrateful soils will at length be left. But it is equally clear, from what has been said, that the progress of population will have become proportionably slower, and less capable of overtaking the diminished power of the land to supply it with food.

If it be necessary to make this proposition yet more plain, by any addition to the preceding arguments, let it be considered that, after no long progress in this advanced state of society, one family employed in agriculture will be able at least to support* itself and three others, in consequence of the improved modes of culture, which the necessity of a large surplus produce, and the application of commercial skill and capital to agricultural pursuits invariably introduce. Three-fourths of the people therefore will be left at large to follow manufactures,

See Appendix to Dirom on the Corn Laws.

or non-productive employments, to be the menial ser vants of the higher orders, to navigate the ships, and fight the battles of the country. Of these threefourths, at least two-thirds, or one-half of the whole population, would cease to reproduce their own numbers of efficient people. This will be evident to any one who considers that, in a state of society where so large a proportion of the people are merchants, manufacturers, or idle persons, at least one-third of the whole population must dwell in towns, some in very large towns; and that the remainder of those, who are calculated not to reproduce their own numbers, principally consists of soldiers, sailors, men of good families but small fortunes, servants, dependents, and emigrants to colonies, or other places. These last are usually taken out of the mass of the population in the prime of life, but before they have contributed children to replace their loss, which must therefore be filled up by the children of others. And with respect to the towns, it is proved to demonstration, that even of those of a moderate size, not one can keep up its own effective population.* It appears that, when our provincial towns were increasing much less rapidly than at present, Dr. Short calculated that nine-nineteenths of the married were strangers; and of 1618 persons examined at the Westminster Infirmary only 824 were found to have been born in London. The continual influx of settlers, in the prime of life, from the country, to repair the waste of the towns, is indeed proved both by actual observation, and by the great excess of the births above the

* See Price on Rev. Paym. Perceval's Essays before quoted, and Malth. b. ii. c. 7.

burials in the adjoining agricultural villages; although the population either of those villages, or of the towns to which the emigrations take place, by no means exhibits a corresponding increase. This excess of births above burials in some of the villages, where no numerical increase has taken place in the population, has been found to mount as high as 2 or 3 to 1; and as the excess of births above deaths is naturally the universal measure of the increase in the population, we may be sure that where that excess is great, in a situation where no increase has actually taken place, the surplus has been drawn off to other points.

If we suppose that, taking one town with another, a fifth of the inhabitants are not natives, but settlers from the country, the calculation will probably be found not exaggerated for towns with a stationary population, and to be much within the proportion that has been proved to exist in many towns that have rapidly increased their numbers. This may perhaps at first surprise many readers; but it will by no means appear exaggerated, if they attend to the following calculation. An excess of annual deaths above annual births of 7 in each 1000 of existing persons has been considered a low average in even of a moderate size. Upon this datum let us suppose a town to contain 1000 inhabitants, and it follows that seven emigrants per 1000 from the country must yearly settle in the town to keep up its population. We will suppose likewise, that the proportion of deaths to the population in this town is 1 to 28; i. e. that a number equal to the whole population dies in 28 years, or a twenty-eighth part (viz. 35 persons in 1000) on the average in

towns