gressive state. Mr. Malthus declines to admit, as an historical fact, that capital has a tendency to increase faster than population; because he conceives that the actual state of the world shows no uniform movement in that direction, but a variable and alternating predominance of one or the other power at different epochs and in different communities.* That such an oscillation does take place-in other words, that social improvement in some countries halts, and that wealth and civilisation are occasionally seen to decline-it is not necessary, and would be useless, to deny. In such instances, undoubtedly, production will be found to languish, and capital to decrease, and, as a certain accompaniment of these symptoms, population will fall off. Still, whatever examples may be cited to this effect, it is surely impossible, with the history of Man before us, recollecting what he is in his primitive state, whereunto he has already attained, and in what direction his efforts and aspirations still point, to deny that the tendency of his nature is to advance in civilisation, not to recede; that social progress is the instinct of his being, the destiny of his race, and the design of his Creator; that, although in this progress he may be interrupted for awhile, and even occasionally thrown back, there can be no more doubt about the ultimate aim and goal of his career, than there is as to the tendency of the waves of the ocean in a rising tide. And if such be the law of man's being, in that sense, and as an inevitable consequence of that very law, it must be the tendency of production to increase in a greater ratio than population.

*Correspondence with Mr. Senior.

LECTURE VI.

ON POPULATION.

THE student of political economy can hardly fail to be struck with the close relation that exists between the doctrines of Mr. Malthus on Population, and another theory of considerable celebrity and influence in this country-I mean that of Mr. Ricardo on Rent. I believe it will generally, though, perhaps, not universally, be found that the same minds which accept the one are prepared to assent to the other. In fact, the arguments for both, as I shall presently show, rest on one and the same hypothesis. Into the merits of Mr. Ricardo's doctrine of rent I have entered at some length in a former course of lectures, and I shall now only refer briefly to its leading features. That eminent writer taught that cultivation commences always in the most fertile or best situated land; that every step in the progress of population compels a country to resort successively for subsistence to less rich or advantageous soils; that those inferior soils yield a proportionally less return to labour; that the produce becomes, consequently, dearer in price, while the rent, which represents the difference between the best and worst lands under cultivation, progressively rises in amount. Again and again he speaks of the necessity under which a community is placed, by the pressure of its increasing

numbers, to descend lower and lower in the scale of cultivation, and to obtain its needful supplies of food from the earth on harder terms. “ The rise of rent," to quote his own words, "is always the effect of the increasing wealth of the country, and of the difficulty of finding food for its augmented population." Now, precisely the same assumption—that of the diminishing productiveness of the land, as compared with the undiminished power of human fecundity - forms the basis of the Malthusian theory. It is true that the consequences which Mr. Malthus has deduced from the alleged rapidity of increase of population as compared with that of subsistence, appalling though they be, falls far short of what might be deduced from an unflinching application of the principles of Ricardo. For Mr. Malthus, while estimating the progress of population in a geometrical ratio, by a doubling of numbers every twenty-five years, has also conceded a capacity of increase in arithmetical progression to the productions of the soil; in other words, he supposes the earth to be capable of yielding an increased quantity of food, equal to its present amount, from twenty-five years to twenty-five years in indefinite succession. Whereas, if the Ricardo theory be true, he was entitled to assume a constantly decreasing ratio of food to labour, he contents himself with assuming an equal and uniform ratio without any limit as to time. But both these writers, in effect, deny that it is possible for production to advance at a rate which will keep up with, still less outstrip, the march of population. "There can be

* Ricardo's Works, by McCulloch, p. 49.

no doubt," says a recent French writer, "that the errors and the terrors of these two economists have mutually acted upon and influenced one another. While Ricardo, possessed with the idea of the pressure of population against subsistence, laid down as a principle a progressive increase in the value of food, which is wholly unwarranted by facts, Malthus, on his part, found, in the theory of rent, which he unhesitatingly adopted, a justification for his own exaggerated alarms."*

It is difficult, I think, to deny that the view which these two theories concurrently hold out of the prospects of society, as civilisation goes on and numbers multiply, is a sad and painful one. According to Ricardo, the progress of society—that progress which I have before described as the inevitable destiny of our race—is identified with increased labour, enhanced prices of food, and higher rents;—the landlord absorbing more and more, the labourer appropriating less and less, of the produce of the soil. According to Malthus, the unequal race between population and production can only terminate, unless arrested by a remedy of which he is not sanguine enough to anticipate the success, in the forced reduction of the superabundant numbers of mankind by vice or misery.

The question, however, is, as I have before stated, not whether the consequences of a system of doctrines be repugnant to our wishes or our feelings, but whether the doctrines themselves be true; and my present

*R. de Fontenay, the continuator of Bastiat's unfinished chapter "de la Population," in the Harmonies Economiques.

object is to examine into the validity of an assumption which lends so powerful a support to both of the theories just referred to, that, if it be admitted, I do not see how either of them, more especially that of Mr. Malthus, can be escaped from; for, beyond all controversy, population does naturally tend to increase,-faster or slower it matters little,-increase at some rate or other is the law of our species. Now, if, contrariwise, subsistence naturally tends after a time to diminish, then the two laws are in fatal conflict-a bankruptcy of nature, more or less deferred, must be the result. How is it possible to escape from this catastrophe - the consequence of two unequally matched forces in the social system?

The diminishing productiveness of the primary source of all subsistence-the earth-is, then, the position wherein all the strength of that doctrine lies, into which we are now inquiring, and I shall proceed to examine the grounds on which this assumption rests. It is supported by the concurrence of many eminent authorities, some of whom I do not venture, without diffidence, to call in question. I shall first quote to you the passages in which the writers referred to have expressed their views on this point. I will begin with Mr. Malthus, who, although, as I have said, he does not in his calculation of the possible supplies of food assume a decreasing rate, but only an uniform and non-increasing one, yet has expressed plainly what his own opinion is as to the real law of production. "To assume," he says, "that the produce of the land could be doubled twice in fifty years, would be contrary to all our knowledge of the properties of land. The improvement of the

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