sufficiency of employment, and consequently of the means of support, in the country * This is a movement which is constantly going on in every district and country, and most extensively in those, which are increasing most rapidly in numbers, and are, of course, most flourishing.

It is surprising, that a statistician of such acuteness as Mr. Malthus, in writing such a passage, did not perceive that this universal movement completely overturns the leading ideas of the subsistence theory and of his Essay, and completely establishes those of the population theory and the Happiness of States, as the laws of nature. Circulators are constantly going from the agricultural to other lines, and from a thinner state of population to a thicker. And why? Confessedly from a constant deficiency of employment in the former. Does not this prove, that the supply of the cultivator's articles, or subsistence, instead of being generally deficient, is, on the average, rather the reverse, or above the demand of population; and, therefore, these circulators are constantly forced to withdraw from the cultivating to other lines, where the demand is greater in proportion to the supply? Had there been a general deficiency of the sup

* Essay, vol. iii. B. iii. ch. 14. p. 59.

ply of food, there would have been a perpetual tendency to detain the whole of the circulators already engaged in cultivation or in those branches of employ immediately connected with it, as well as those young additional circulators produced by the increase of population. Yet, according to Mr. Malthus's notions, there is a constant deficiency in the supply of food, and, of course, in the number of suppliers.

Again, if a thicker rate of population did not create a greater average amount of employment and wealth, why should circulators keep constantly going from a thinner? How could they be absorbed there? But there is an incessant absorption of them in those thicker and more rapidly increasing masses. A greater rate of populousness and increase of population, therefore, produces a greater average quantum of employment and wealth*.

And yet, according to the antipopulation theory, from the population of towns feeling a too great fulness in all or most lines, there must necessarily be a constant tendency to emigrate to the less full or thinner peopled portions of a district or country: a tendency directly the reverse of that in nature; for, with certain peculiar or local exceptions, this is con

*Happiness of States, B. ii. ch. 2, p. 45,

fessedly from the thinner to the thicker peopled portions.

It is a pity but our statisticians would ac custom themselves to reason patiently from facts.

I shall conclude this interesting portion of the discussion, respecting the influence of the increase of population on the quantum of employment, by summing up in the words of Mr. Gray.

"Every man requires a number of persons, of various descriptions, to labour for him, on an average proportioned to the amount of circaland which he possesses. The circulator worth ten thousand a year will give full employment to several persons, perhaps from twenty to thirty, and partial employment to a very great number, probably, in the whole, equivalent to about two hundred fully employed. But a circulator of the great mass could not give full employment to one: and this deficiency on the part of that body allows the employers or circulators to a greater amount to obtain the extra hands they want. An increase of population, with its necessary attendant, an increase of circuland, enables the great circulators or employers to become still greater, and it operates the same way with respect to the rest. It increases the demand of all ranks, by still creating additional wants, and affording the

means of supplying them. New and more extensive buyers or consumers, of course, require new and more extensive sellers, or manufacturers. Instead, therefore, of tending to overstock, an increase of population tends to enlarge the demand for hands in general rather faster than the supply. This supply is furnished not only from the more rapid increase of population from earlier marriage and immigration, but from the greater quantity of work performed in the same time by the circulators in their various lines. In a district crowded with population, the average quantity of work produced by the individuals is double and often three or four times the amount of that of a thinly peopled district. With all the increase in the number of hands and in the average quantity of their work, the more crowded the district, the more general is the complaint of a scarcity of hands, except on some failure in business arising from temporary circumstances; while in districts with a thin population, there is almost uniformly a complaint of an overabundance of hands and a want of work, and the consequence is a constant emigration to more populous places. Thus reciprocally an increase of population tends to increase circuland, and the increase of circuland to increase population*."

* Happiness of States, B. ii. ch. 2. p. 44.

P

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BOOK IV.

DOES POPULATION IN ITS INCREASE TEND TO AUGMENT OR DIMINISH THE AVERAGE AMOUNT OF INCOME AND WEALTH?

CHAPTER I.

THE SOURCE OF PRODUCTIVENESS IN POINT OF WEALTH, AS OPERATED UPON BY THE INCREASE OF POPULATION.

HAVING already gone so fully into the question of the source of productiveness as to wealth*, which is essentially connected in some points with that which we are now discussing, I shall content myself here with a few general observations.

M. Quesnay finds the source of productiveness, or wealth-producing quality of things, in the labour alone connected with the cultivation of the soil. Dr. Adam Smith has extended this quality, and admitted within the productive circle some other kinds of labour. He considers the wealth-producing quality to

* All Classes productive of national Wealth.