tion. We cannot err, therefore, in fixing it considerably earlier. Thus Hesiod mentions fifteen as the proper age1; and, in one of the most useful and judicious works in Grecian literature, Xenophon's Economics, we find Ischomachus, the hero of the dialogue, saying, that he married his wife at that age;-fifteen3. On the whole, therefore, there is not the least evidence that what is called the preventive check prevailed in the ancient states of Greece under any form whatever. (10) The philosophy and legislation of Rome, I will shortly remark, were precisely coincident with those of Greece on this important subject. I have already observed, that the ancient vice of infanticide was virtually interdicted; and I need not add, on the other hand, that marriage was promoted by all the means which legislation could devise for that purpose. I shall neither enumerate these laws, nor appeal to the authorities, who were the means of enacting them. The lyric poet of that empire, no doubt, presents the prevailing opinion on this subject, and the duty of the Roman rulers in regard to it, in the stanzas addressed to Diana, as goddess of child-bearing: Rite maturos aperire partus Seu Genitalis: Diva, producas subolem, Patrumque Fœminis, prolisque novæ feraci (11) These prayers, however, availed nothing: the conscript fathers made laws, but they were as inefficacious. So far from the natural tendency of these Romans being to increase beyond the means of subsistence, the profusion in which they shared these means of subsist 1 Hesiod, Εργ. και Ημερ. β'. 315, 316. 2 Xenophon. 3 Horat. Carm. Sec. ence far outran all their necessities, and became their ruin. Their numbers were barely kept up by that vast influx of men poured into the Capital of the World from all the surrounding nations. Even in Cicero's time, the decay of the old and genuine Roman stock was in full progress, and almost complete. "Had not Tiberius Gracchus," said the patriot, "caused the freedmen to be admitted into the city "tribes, the republic, which we are now scarce able "to support, would have ceased to exist." A little after, we read in Tacitus, that "were the men de"ducted whose fathers were enfranchised, the number "of free-born citizens would dwindle into nothing1." In succeeding times, the population still further declined, till Julian exclaimed, "the cities are in ruins, "and the provinces dreadful with desolation." length, as Montesquieu says, "the number of people "was so extremely diminished, that the emperors were obliged to retire to Ravenna, a city once for"tified by sea, as Venice is now." It is useless to pursue the subject any further. The majesty of Rome gradually declined, her population kept perpetually diminishing, till that mighty empire at length expired, almost as feebly and obscurely as it commenced. At (12) Intellectual superiority consists of little more than an anticipation of the progress of human knowledge and experience; and the sages of Greece would, indeed, have had little claim to that distinction, had they busied themselves in providing against evils which had no existence, and totally overlooked those which assailed their country from an opposite direction; and with which it was constantly struggling, till it was 1 Tacitus, Ann. xiii., c. 26. * Amm. Marcell., 1. xxiv. 3 Montesquieu. Obs. sur la grand. et decad. &c. cxix. at length finally overcome. But they saw the real evil; not that of a tendency to an excess, but to a diminution in their population. Hence the anxiety with which they encouraged the only real and permanent source of human increase,-marriage; the privileges with which they invested that state, and the honours they conferred on a numerous progeny. Hence the disgrace with which they stigmatized the contrary condition, celibacy. So that Paley is fully justified in asserting, that some heathen "nations appear to "have been more sensible of the importance of mar"riage institutions than we are. The Spartans," says he, "obliged their citizens to marry by penalties; the "Romans encouraged theirs by the jus trium libero"rum'"; inflicting, indeed, disabilities upon even those who were married, if they had no children. And happy had it been for their respective countries had they been as successful in banishing the positive, as they were in annihilating the preventive, check ; they would then have continued to have a name and a place among the nations of the earth. 1 Paley, Moral Philosophy, b. iii., c. i., p. 183. 283 CHAPTER XVI. OF THE REMAINING DIRECT CHECKS TO POPULATION. (1) HAVING Considered the first great check to population, war, or, in other words, that once almost constant slaughter of the species, which it has been so confidently asserted was long the principal agent in keeping down the numbers of mankind to the level of their subsistence, it remains that a few words be added regarding the other direct means which have been pointed out as assisting in the same work. To one of these, infanticide, much allusion has been necessarily made in the preceding remarks on the philosophy of Greece; a few observations, however, of a more general nature, are due to the subject. (2) Regarding the permission of this crime in ancient times and heathen countries, Mr. Malthus thus expresses himself: "It had without doubt two ends "in view; first, that which is most obvious, the pre"vention of such an excessive population as would 66 cause universal poverty and discontent; and, se"condly, that of keeping up the population to the "level of what the territory could support, by remov"ing the terrors of too numerous a family, and conse quently the principal obstacle to marriage. From "the effect of this practice in China, we have reason "to think that it is better calculated to attain the "latter than the former purpose. But if the legis"lator either did not see this, or if the barbarous habits "of the times prompted parents invariably to prefer "the murder of their children to poverty, the practice "would appear to be very particularly calculated to "answer both the ends in view, and to preserve, as 66 completely and as constantly as the nature of the thing would permit, the requisite proportion between "the food and the numbers which were to consume "it 1." (3) I have seldom, never indeed, read a sentence which excited in me feelings of such strong and unmingled disgust as the foregoing one. Fully acquitting its author of any intention to palliate, much less to recommend, this dreadful crime, still the very supposition of its being, under any state of society whatever, one of the foreseen and best calculated means of balancing the numbers of the human species and their food, an operation rendered necessary, as some suppose, by the miscalculations of nature, appears to me most astounding. Other means, it will be seen in the sequel, nature resorts to, with a certainty which never fails. Nor is child-murder "very particularly calculated" for any purpose but that of keeping a population in savage barbarism and wretchedness as well as guilt, and interrupting its advance to plenty and prosperity. (4) Postponing to the terminating chapters of the next book, all consideration of the imputation upon the Chinese of the general practice of infanticide, and having in the two preceding ones wiped off the aspersion cast upon the legislators and philosophers of antiquity, as encouraging it, I shall add but few words at present on so repulsive a subject. That it never could have been one of the direct and necessary checks to population, is sufficiently apparent from two considerations; first, because it generally was, and still is, confined to a very barbarous state of existence, in Malthus, Essay on Population, p. 164. |