in the present work; but on further consideration it seems unnecessary to do so. The principle of popu lation opposed, and that meant to be established, equally reject it; either as a proper or an efficacious means of adjusting the numbers of mankind to their subsistence. I will not contend, indeed, but that motives of the most praiseworthy kind, and leading often to the happiest consequences, result from it when individually and voluntarily undertaken; but whenever it is effectuated upon a large scale, and more especially, conducted in a manner at all compulsory, (always excepting the case where it is made a penal infliction,) I cannot but think it highly objectionable. It almost always then implies tyranny and oppression in the country left, and as generally leads to injustice and cruelty in that to which it is directed. Its efforts have far oftener occasioned the diminution and dispossession of the original and rightful inhabitants, (not to say their extirpation,) than the amelioration of their condition, and the consequent increase of their numbers; which it cannot be doubted would have speedily sufficed to occupy their own territory, had they been civilized instead of subdued and oppressed. (17) Much might be added regarding the sufferings which have always ensued whenever any considerable deportation of this nature has taken place. Much also concerning the doubts which exist in all reasonable minds, whether the countries and climates to which they are transplanted will be ultimately found favourable to the new inhabitants; doubts which it is possible a few more generations may solve little to the satisfaction of those most concerned. Waiving, however, these considerations entirely,-it only needs to be added, that each of the systems now placed before the reader equally rejects emigration as the na VOL. I L tural or proper resource of nations. The principle of superfecundity holds, that the vacuum thus occasioned would be speedily supplied, but certainly by a less vigorous or valuable class of society; the national disgrace and expense of such attempts would, therefore, be repaid, as they deserve, by a positive and direct loss. On the other hand, the law of population un folded in this treatise, shews these national excisions to be unnecessary and mischievous. No one, however, can possibly contend that emigration can be more than a temporary expedient, inasmuch as the countries which receive it will themselves be replenished, and, according to the prevalent theory, with a rapidity which will allow but of a very short period for such accessions. The remedy, therefore, would entirely fail when the disease had become the most distressing and inveterate. They have studied but very slightly the volume of Nature, or at least comprehended its import very imperfectly, who imagine that, in her most momentous laws and operations, she is governed by temporary expediency. (18) But to return. The precedence of population to food in the darker ages of the world has evidently been the main cause of planting the nations; and, since mankind have become more settled and numerous, of civilizing them and were it possible for our anti-populationists to reverse this principle, and cause the food of mankind to precede their wants, and to govern their numbers; the world would again become gradually depopulated, and sink into the barbarism from which it has been happily rescued. 147 CHAPTER IX. OF THE CHECKS TO POPULATION, ENUNCIATED IN THE (1) I PROCEED now to the consideration of one of the most important and essential branches of the argument, namely, those checks to population which occupy so large a space, and act so conspicuous a part, in the theory under examination, since they have to reconcile its adverse ratios to each other, and to shew that their united effects harmonize with the history and condition of the human race. How vain the attempt, though made at the expense of outraging the best feelings and most sacred principles of mankind, remains to be shewn. And I cannot but assert, at the very threshold of the argument, that a theory, however plausible, which, to the plain apprehension of the many (who have attained to no slight perception of moral truth and feeling), arraigns the good providence of God as insufficient to supply the wants of his creatures, if they obey, conformably to his own institutions, the most imperative laws of nature; and which, in order to rectify the error, announces a system of expedients, that is a still greater insult upon his essential perfections, has but a slender chance of being otherwise than as false in principle, as it is evidently pernicious in its consequences. (2) These checks, however multiplied in the detail, are resolved into three distinct heads, Vice, Misery, and Moral Restraint. Far more insatiable and loath some than the triple-mouthed dog at the gate of Hell, this Cerberus stands at the portal of existence, and demands a perpetual sacrifice of human victims; but this consists, we are informed, of those "redundant numbers," which are consequently to be devoted on behalf of the whole. Wealth has a sop placed in its hands, consecrated by this system," a patent for food," and is therefore to escape scathless : defenceless poverty is the appointed victim. I shall not particularize the horns of this miscreated being; they are represented as numerous, but the catalogue is too disgusting to be unnecessarily repeated, they belong to their respective heads, and are worthy of them. If I am fortunate enough to destroy the pest, it will not be by aiming at its extremities. At first, indeed, this "delicate monster 1" shewed only two fronts, vice and misery; a third, however, was subsequently put forth, to recommend, under a more comely mask, the whole system, and was called "moral restraint," a name which seems invented as a perfect specimen of irony: but the slightest reflection will resolve this into the first of these ancient and legitimate checks, or rather into both the former. "The force of nature could no farther go, To form a third, are joined the other two." The last check, however, being, as its author confesses, an after-thought with himself, it shall be made a matter of subsequent consideration in this work. (3) Let us then first examine the nature and effects of the two original, and what are still dignified by the appellation of " direct checks,"-vice and misery. In doing this, it is unnecessary to follow minutely the several ramifications of the system, the question having to 1 Shakspeare, Tempest. 2 Malthus, Essay on Population, preface, vii. 66 be determined on general principles. It will abundantly suffice to consider, under these heads, vice and misery, which are to adjust our numbers to our food, those "correctives of the redundant numbers of mankind," as they are called, war, pestilence, and famine, under one or other of which, most of those calamities, paraded through the system under consideration, may be properly enough classed. War, the ancient leader and champion of the whole, may be allowed to include in his sweeping murders, that infanticide, which the author, so frequently under notice, says, appears to to be very particularly calculated to answer the end" in view, as well as all those cruelties which take away or abridge the duration of human life; and if you please, that self-immolation, which, however, is usually occasioned by intemperance, profligacy, or pride-rarely by actual want. Pestilence may muster, in its spreading devastations, all those diseases which are supposed to be induced by a crowded population; and famine, all that abject poverty which is fatal to human life. The operation of these various checks, severally or combined, in by far the greatest, but the worst peopled, part of the world, is thus emphatically described by the author I am rebutting. "When "population," says he, "has increased nearly to the "utmost limits of food, all the preventive and positive "checks will naturally operate with increased force. "Vicious habits with regard to the sex will be more "general; the exposing of children more frequent; and "both the probability and fatality of wars and epide"mics will be considerably greater, and these causes "will probably continue to operate, till the population " is sunk below the level of the food, and then the return "to comparative plenty will again produce an in ! Malthus, Essay on Population, p. 164. |