The environs of Zurich afford a striking instance; a spot which, for the activity of industry and general well-being of the people, is probably not to be surpassed in the world. This canton contains 175,000 souls, or about one to every two acres and threequarters.

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Considering how large a proportion of the canton is rock or forest, this population is enormous. In five parishes on the borders of the lake there are 8498 souls; and they contain only 6050 acres of arable land, 3407 of pasture, and 698 of vines, being scarcely one acre and a quarter to each individual; a degree of density surpassing that of any other part of Europe. Yet, there is nowhere to be seen. such an extraordinary prevalence of comfort among the peasantry.'

In Belgium we have the spectacle of a country for which nature has done comparatively little; the soil in some of the best cultivated parts having been originally a sterile sand, but now made rich and fertile by the indefatigable industry of the people, which has raised its agriculture to an unrivalled pitch of perfection. It is impossible to traverse the plains of Flanders without admiring the gardenlike cultivation of the fields, the number and magnitude of the cities, the frequency of the villages, the comfortable farms and dwellings of the peasantry. Yet the population of Flanders amounts to 507 to the square mile; nearly twice the density of that of Great Britain, and more than twice that of France. Sir A. Alison, in his work on the Principles of Population, draws a just conclusion

* Alison, Principles of Population, vol. i. p. 419.

from a survey of the social condition of these two countries. "The progress of population," he says, "affords no reason to anticipate an increase in the misery of the people when it is accompanied by the political advantages which develope the limitations to its advance. Humanity would have no cause to regret an increase of the numbers of the species which should cover the plains of the world with the husbandry of Flanders, or its mountains with the peasantry of Switzerland." *

To test the principle now under consideration by a survey of the vast and diversified picture which Germany presents, would be a task exceeding my present limits; but the result of such an inquiry, it may be confidently stated, would confirm the general conclusion which I have advanced, that populousness and prosperity, scanty numbers and social depression, stand in the double relation of cause and effect to each other. In Prussia both wealth and numbers have lately made extraordinary strides; yet no distress is observable among the people, nor any appearance of redundancy of numbers. Among the many diversities which the various provinces of Germany present, none is more striking than that between Saxony and Bavaria. “One would imagine," says Reisebeckt," that Erzegebirge and the Thuringian forests are the boundaries placed by nature between light and darkness, riches and poverty, freedom and slavery. Probably, in the whole extent of the world, a stronger contrast cannot be found than between Bavaria and Saxony; and yet nature has

* Alison, vol. i. p. 428.

† Quoted by Alison, vol. i. p. 493.

done more for the former than the latter." Saxony is extremely populous; its numbers amounted, prior to the late partition, to 1,900,000. Bavaria, though far richer by nature, has not much more than half that number; yet the one is marked by comfort, cleanliness, and prosperity, the other and less populous province, by indolence, squalor, extreme ignorance, and a wretched state of agriculture.

Spain is a country of which the social features are peculiarly calculated to point the moral of the political economist, exemplifying as it does, in its present state of sterility and depopulation, the sure effects of despotic government, commercial restrictions, and fiscal abuses. In its blighted industry, stagnant trade, and exhausted treasury, this state holds out an emphatic warning to the rulers and statesmen of all countries. Yet, even in Spain, there are degrees of mismanagement and indigence. The good cultivation, active industry, and comfortable villages, observable in Valencia, which enjoys an immunity from the most oppressive taxes, and in Biscay, where the people possess independent privileges, and the Spanish crown has only a limited domination, form bright spots in the otherwise gloomy picture of the Peninsula. The most flourishing provinces are likewise the best peopled; but in Spain, generally, the population is extremely scanty, being not one-third as great in proportion to the surface as that of England, and less than half as great as that of France.

To discriminate the relative influence of different causes in producing prosperity or distress, in any community, is no doubt a difficult task, requiring extensive knowledge and insight, and great caution

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against hasty inferences. On such a subject it would be extreme presumption to dogmatize. But in referring to countries that are at once populous and flourishing, and in assigning their populousness as a main source of their prosperity, I am not speaking at random, but am ascribing effects to causes of known and intelligible efficacy, if it be true, as few will venture to deny, that the wealth of nations depends on the productiveness of their labour, and this again upon the facilities for combining its action, dividing its functions, and exchanging its products, which a concentrated population alone can afford. We hear often of the dangers of redundant population: there are two senses in which this phrase may be understood. We may conceive a people to be redundant, either because the capabilities of the country to afford subsistence have been exhausted, or because those capabilities have never been developed. In the latter sense, many communities have been afflicted with an excess of numbers; but we shall find that it is a malady peculiarly incident to those countries that are most thinly peopled in proportion to their surface. In the former sense, I believe over-population to be a chimera. The history of the world furnishes no example of a community in which, while the channels of industry have been unimpeded, and the gifts of Nature have been turned to good account, subsistence has run short, or the increase of wealth has been checked by reason of the excessive numbers of the people. Experience records no such instance in the past, and the laws which regulate the increase of the species, rightly understood, repel any such apprehension for the future.

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LECTURE VIII.

ON POPULATION.

I PROPOSE to speak in this Lecture of the "checks " on population. That there are checks which confine the power of human increase within limits more or less restricted, according to the circumstances of each community, admits of no doubt. The physical power of reproduction in the human species is such, that supposing it to operate absolutely without check, it would, in the course of a very few centuries, overspread with a dense mass of human beings every corner of the habitable earth. In far less time than it has taken to produce the now comparatively thin and scattered population of the globe, the fecundity of mankind must have been arrested by the failure not of subsistence only, but of space. Instead of 700 or 800 millions being now the sum total of the race, it would have reached a number which arithmetic has no symbols to express. How are we to account for this prodigious disparity between the physical capacity of increase and the rate at which mankind have actually multiplied? We find on inquiry that there is a law of limitation as well as of progression in regard to the numbers of our species. There are causes inherent in the constitution of society which limit the growth of popula