[SECT. III.-DEPENDENCE OF POPULATION ON THE MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE ENJOYED BY THE PEOPLE.]

These remarks naturally lead me to consider how far the population of a country depends on the means of subsistence which the people enjoy.

[SUBSECT. I.-Dependence of Marriage and Population on the Notion held in regard to the Competent Support of a Family.]

That a country cannot be peopled beyond its resources, is almost an identical proposition; and, on the other hand, it is no less certain, that population (wherever things are left to their own course) will advance till checked by this limit. The natural inducements to marriage are so strong, that no encouragement on the part of the politician is required, provided the circumstances of the society are such as to present to all orders of men a reasonable prospect of their being able to rear and educate a family, according to the ideas of competency which they have formed to themselves. It appears to me to be necessary to modify in this way the general proposition, which is commonly stated in too unlimited terms; for, in order to engage a man to marry, he must not only have a prospect of being able to provide to his children the necessaries of life, but he must have a prospect of being able to rear his family, without lowering that rank to which he has been accustomed; or retrenching any of those articles of luxury which, by habit, he has been accustomed to consider as essential to his comfort. It is possible, therefore, that of two countries which afford the means of subsistence in equal abundance, the one may be much more populous than the other, in consequence of the more moderate ideas of a competency which the generality of the people entertain.

Of this last remark, no proof more satisfactory can be produced than what is furnished by a comparative view of the state of population in England and in Ireland. Without enter

ing into any nice computations of the number of inhabitants in either country, we may venture to assert, that, in the latter, the population is incomparably greater in proportion to its extent than in the former,—due allowance being made for the defects under which it labours, of police, of commerce, and of both agricultural and manufacturing industry.-The numbers in England and Wales are very variously estimated by different writers, according to their political prejudices; by Dr. Price, (in 1777, [Essay, &c.]) at less than five millions; by Mr. George Chalmers, (in his Political Estimate, [about 1791,]) at more than eight millions. The former is of opinion that the population of the kingdom has suffered a great diminution since the Revolution in 1688: the latter asserts, that during this period it has received an augmentation of a million and a half.-With respect to our sister island, notwithstanding the powerful obstacles which retard its progress, all accounts agree in admitting a great increase of inhabitants since the end of the last century. In 1657, the number was computed by Sir William Petty to be 850,000; and in 1672, to be 1,100,000.1 In 1688, it has been estimated at 1,200,000. At present different opinions have been adopted concerning its actual population, but all of them admit, that the augmentation has been remarkably rapid. Mr. Young

states it in the year 1779 as under three millions, according to the common belief then entertained by those with whom he conversed in the course of his agricultural tour.2 Mr. Howlett, from documents transmitted to him in 1786, by Mr. Beresford, then first Commissioner of the Irish Revenues, states it as amounting at least to two millions and a-half; and concludes that since the time of the Revolution it has nearly doubled. Mr. Chalmers computes it, in 1791, at no less than 4,193,158, asserting that, during the last hundred years, Ireland has done much more than trebled its inhabitants. From the Report of the Secret Committee of the Irish Parliament, published last summer,

1 See Young's Ireland, p. 88 of Appendix to Vol. II.; and Chalmers's Estimate, p. 223.

2 Young, ibid.

3 Essay on the Population of Ireland, (Richardson, 1786,) pp. 15, 20.

Political Estimate, p. 222.

(1798,) Dr. Emmet appears to have stated the actual population of that country at "five millions, whereas, at the time of the Revolution, it did not exceed a million and a half." [Addition :]-Lord Castlereagh, in his speech, (February 5, 1800,) "on delivering to the House of Commons of Ireland the LordLieutenant's message on the subject of a union with Great Britain," estimates the population of Ireland from 3,500,000 to 4,000,000. This he mentions as the common computation at present; and as he may be presumed, from his official situation, to have availed himself on such an occasion, of all the most authentic sources of information, I should be disposed amidst so great a diversity of statements, to adopt his numbers in preference to any of the others.

This very extraordinary increase in the population of Ireland, (admitted by writers of the most opposite political views,) is to be ascribed almost entirely to the peculiar habits of the lower orders, in consequence of which they find it so much easier than the English peasantry, to satisfy their wants in the two great articles of habitation and food. Something, undoubtedly, must be placed to the account of the comparative advantages they enjoy, in being free from the oppression of the English Poor Laws, and the consequent Laws of Settlement;1 and also to the account of their common food, (potatoes,) which experience has shown to go much farther to the support of animal life than wheat, or any of the other sorts of grain employed for food in this part of the world that can be raised on the same extent of surface. But that the circumstances I mention are by far the most important, may be inferred from the following statements, for which we are indebted to a very intelligent observer, (Mr. Young,) who made an agricultural tour in Ireland, in the years 1776, 1777, and 1778.

"In England, where the poor are, in many respects, in such a superior state, a couple will not marry unless they can get a house to build, which, take the kingdom through, will cost from twenty-five to sixty pounds; half the life, and all the

1 Young's Ireland, Vol. II., Appendix, p. 86.

2 Smith's Wealth of Nations, Vol. I. p. 240. Irish edit., [B. I. c. xi. First Part.]

vigour and youth of a man and woman, are passed before they can save such a sum; and when they have got it, so burthensome are poor to a parish, that it is twenty to one if they get permission to erect their cottage. But in Ireland, the cabin is not an object of a moment's consideration; to possess a cow and a pig is an earlier aim; the cabin begins with a hovel that is erected with two days' labour, and the young couple pass not their days in celibacy for want of a nest to produce their young in. If it comes to a matter of calculation, it will then be but as four pounds to thirty." "Of their food (potatoes) there is one circumstance which must ever recommend it, they have a belly-full, and that, let me add, is more than the superfluities of an Englishman leave to his family. Let any person examine minutely into the receipt and expenditure of an English cottage, and he will find that tea, sugar, and strong liquors can come only from pinched bellies. I will not assert that potatoes are a better food than bread and cheese, but I have no doubt of a belly-full of the one being much better than half-a-belly-full of the other, still less have I, that the milk of an Irishman is incomparably better than the smallbeer, gin, or tea of the Englishman, and this even for the father, how much better must it be for the poor infants? Milk to them is nourishment, is health, is life.

"If any one doubts the comparative plenty which attends the board of a poor native of England and Ireland, let him attend to their meals. The sparingness with which our labourer eats his bread and cheese is well known: mark the Irishman's potato bowl placed on the floor, the whole family upon their hams round it, devouring a quantity almost incredible, the beggar seating himself to it with a hearty welcome, the pig taking his share as readily as the wife, the cocks, hens, turkeys, geese, the cur, the cat, and perhaps the cow,—and all partaking of the same dish. No man can have been often a witness of it, without being convinced of the plenty, and I will add, the cheerfulness that attends it."*

The same author adds in another passage:-" Marriage is

* [Tour in Ireland.]

certainly more general in Ireland than in England: I scarce ever found an unmarried farmer or cottar; but it is seen more in other classes, which with us do not marry at all; such as servants: the generality of footmen and of women servants in gentlemen's families, are married, a circumstance we very rarely see in England. Another point of importance is their children not being burthensome. In all the inquiries I made into the state of the poor, I found their happiness and ease generally relative to the number of their children, and nothing considered as such a misfortune as having none. Whenever this is the fact, or the general idea, it must necessarily have a considerable effect in promoting early marriages, and consequently population.'

It is not, however, by preventing marriages that the poverty of the lower orders chiefly obstructs population. The attachments of sex, and the fond hopes of domestic bliss which a youthful imagination inspires, are motives too powerful to be always regulated by the suggestions of prudence; and in the humbler walks of life, where vanity and ambition have little influence, they are sufficient to blind the judgment to all considerations of futurity. In such circumstances the indigence of the parents, while it renders the conjugal union a source of constant anxiety and despondence to themselves, is attended with consequences equally fatal to the community. "The tender plant," as Mr. Smith has observed, "is produced, but in so cold a soil, and so severe a climate, soon withers and dies. It is not uncommon in the Highlands of Scotland, for a mother who has borne twenty children, not to have two alive. Several officers," he continues, " of great experience, have assured me, that so far from recruiting their regiments, they have never been able to supply it with drums and fifes from all the soldiers' children that were born in it. A greater number of fine children, however, is seldom seen anywhere than about a barrack of soldiers. Very few of them it seems, arrive at the age of thirteen or fourteen. In some places, one-half the children die before they are four years of age, in many places before * [Ibidem.]