THE

MONTHLY REVIEW,

For SEPTEMBER, 1798.

ART. I. An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it affects the future Improvement of Society. With Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other Writers. 8vo. pp. 400. 6s. Boards. Johnson. 1798.

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a century has now elapsed, since certain strong spirits in France scattered the seeds of a new species of philosophy, that has already raised its head to heaven and overshadowed the earth. Regarding with fastidious contempt all the established systems of policy, of morals, and of religion, by which the conduct and the opinions of mankind had hitherto been regulated, they laboured with unremitted industry, supported by great talents, to give a new bias to the human mind; and to eradicate from it that principle which had contributed so powerfully to facilitate government; - that principle which impels the many to submit their opinions to the real or supposed superior wisdom of the few. Their labours were successful. Having sapped the foundation on which the superstructure of opinion rested, it was not very difficult to s subvert those opinions themselves. Men began to look at the existing establishments of government, and at received systems of religious faith and morals, with a degree of suspicion proportioned to their antiquity; and unfortunately the abuses in the one and the errors in the other, which were but too obvious, served to confirm the favourite dogma of those new apostles, that they were all founded in tyranny, in hypocrisy, and in fraud. That unique phænomenon in the history of man, the French revolution, with the little good and all the evil which it has produced, is one of the consequences of this change. That revolution, which was itself an effect of the new philosophy, gave increased efficacy to its cause; and it imparted new energy to those principles which had already been found so powerful in unsettling the human mind. The new teachers of the world did not neglect to avail themselves of the advantage. They persisted in the VOL. XXVII. attack

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attack on the old establishments, moral and political; until, as they supposed, they left not one stone on another of that edifice which it had been the labor of so many centuries to raise, to strengthen, and to embellish.

It is not in the nature of the human mind to rest without a system. No sooner, therefore, had the philosophers demolished the old systems, which, combining perhaps some falsehood with much truth, had the sanction at least of the common-sense of mankind, than they applied themselves to the fabrication of new theories; in which imagination supplied the place of experience, and man was considered as they wished him to be rather than as he is.

Of some of those system-builders, Fancy itself was unable to follow the rapid flights. They conceived man in a state not only such as has never yet existed, but such an one that even a strong imagination cannot conceive it possible for him to exist in it. His present circumstances they describe in the language of opprobrium and contempt; and those to which they suppose he will one day reach, they adorn with poetical panegyric: but of the means by which the transition is to be effected they are silent; and the obvious difficulties, which impede the desired change, they affect to undervalue, or totally overlook.

In this class of men, the late M. Condorcet and the present Mr. Godwin hold a conspicuous place:-the one inculcating the possibility, if not probability, that the nature of man may be improved to absolute perfection in body and in mind, and his existence in this world protracted to immortality; the other recommending a system of equality which should banish vice and misery from the earth, and sublimate the passions of man into the qualities and dispositions of pure, perfect, and benevolent

intellect.

Speculations so fantastic, systems so unfounded in the experience of mankind, and so contrary to those opinions which common sense suggests, and which the experience of several thousand years has corroborated, most men would think fit subjects rather for ridicule than refutation. The author of the volume now before us, however, who seems to possess a very candid mind as well as a sound understanding, believes that more good may result from a fair discussion even of such hypotheses, when advanced by able men, than from affecting to annihilate them by neglect. Such men, he thinks, neglect has no tendency to convince of their mistakes; on the contrary, a candid investigation of these subjects, accompanied with a perfect readiness to adopt any theory warranted by sound philosophy, may tend to convince them that in forming improbable and unfounded hypotheses, so far from enlarging the bounds of human cience,

science, they are contracting it, throwing us back into the very infancy of knowlege, and weakening the foundations of that mode of philosophising, under the auspices of which science has of late made such rapid advances.' He moreover thinks that a complete and satisfactory answer to them is not difficult to be given. It is involved, he conceives, in a few simple and indubitable propositions, which it is his object in this essay to develope. They are briefly these :

The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.

By the law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, the effects of these two unequal porvers must be kept equal. Therefore a strong check on population must be kept continually in operation, which check can be found only in vice or in misery, and which therefore will always constitute an insuperable obstacle to the perfectibility of man..

In illustrating these propositions, the author proves that the difference between the power of population in man, and the power of the earth in producing sustenance, is the difference between a geometrical and an arithmetical series; each generation of man, when not under the influence of any check to population, producing double their own numbers; while the produce of the earth, under the highest degree of cultivation, increases in any determinate period, only by the repeated addition of a fixed quantity. The excess of this power of population, beyond the power of produce, creates what he calls the preventive check on marriage, which, he says, operates at this day in full force in all the European countries; and he instances its efficacy and manner of operation on the different classes of the community in England.

The second positive check to population is that which represses an increase already begun, and is confined chiefly, though not solely, to the lowest orders of society.

This check (he says) is not so obvious to common view as the other I have mentioned; and, to prove distinctly the force and extent of its operation, would require, perhaps, more data than we are in possession of. But I believe it has been very generally remarked by those who have attended to bills of mortality, that of the number of children who die annually, much too great a proportion belongs to those, who may be supposed unable to give their offspring proper food and attention; exposed as they are occasionally to severe distress, and confined, perhaps, to unwholesome habitations and hard labour. This mortality among the children of the poor has been constantly taken notice of in all towns. It certainly does not pre.. vail in an equal degree in the country; but the subject has not hitherto received sufficient attention to enable any one to say, that there are not more deaths in proportion, among the children of the

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poor, even in the country, than among those of the middling and higher classes. Indeed, it seems difficult to suppose that a labourer's wife who has six children, and who is sometimes in absolute want of bread, should be able always to give them the food and attention necessary to support life. The sons and daughters of peasants will not be found such rosy cherubs in real life, as they are described to be in romances. It cannot fail to be remarked by those who live. much in the country, that the sons of labourers are very apt to be stunted in their growth, and are a long while arriving at maturity. Boys that you would guess to be fourteen or fifteen, are upon inquiry, frequently found to be eighteen or nineteen. And the lads who drive plough, which must certainly be a healthy exercise, are very rarely seen with any appearance of calves to their legs; a circumstance, which can only be attributed to a want either of proper, or of sufficient nourishment."

To these obstacles to increase of population in all longoccupied countries, he adds the vicious customs with respect to women, great cities, unwholesome manufactures, luxury, pestilence, and war; all of which, he thinks, may be fairly resolved into MISERY and VICE.

Having established the existence of these checks on population, which, originating in vice or misery, must for ever impede the progress of man towards perfection, he applies them to expose the futility of M. Condorcet's system, as delivered in his Essay on the Progress of the Human Mind. Condorcet, indeed, had in some measure anticipated the objection: for he says, as quoted by our author :

"But in this progress of industry and happiness, each generation will be called to more extended enjoyments, and in consequence, by the physical constitution of the human frame, to an increase in the number of individuals. Must not there arrive a period then, when these laws, equally necessary, shall counteract each other? When the increase of the number of men surpassing their means of subsistence, the necessary result must be, either a continual diminution of happiness and population, a movement truly retrograde, or at least, a kind of oscillation between good and evil? In societies ar rived at this term, will not this oscillation be a constantly subsisting cause of periodical misery? Will it not mark the limit when all fur. ther amelioration will become impossible, and point out that term to the perfectibility of the human race, which it may reach in the course of ages, but can never pass ?>

• He then adds,

" There is no person who does not see how very distant such period is from us; but shall we ever arrive at it? It is equally impossible to pronounce for or against the future realization of an event, which cannot take place, but at an æra, when the human race will have attained improvements, of which we can at present scarcely form a conception.

Mr.

Mr. Condorcet's picture of what may be expected to happen when the number of men shall surpass the means of their subsistence, is justly drawn. The oscillation which he describes, will certainly take place, and will, without doubt, be a constantly subsisting cause of periodical misery. The only point in which I differ from Mr. Condorcet with regard to this picture, is, the period, when it may be applied to the human race. Mr. Condorcet thinks, that it cannot possibly be applicable, but at an æra extremely distant. If the proportion between the natural increase of population and food, which I have given, be in any degree near the truth, it will appear, on the contrary, that the period when the number of men surpass their means of subsistence, has long since arrived; and that this necessary oscillation, this constantly subsisting cause of periodical misery, has existed ever since we have had any histories of mankind, does exist at present, and will for ever continue to exist, unless some decided change take place, in the physical constitution of our nature.

• Mr. Condorcet, however, goes on to say, that should the period, which he conceives to be so distant, ever arrive, the human race, and the advocates for the perfectibility of man, need not be alarmed at it. He then proceeds to remove the difficulty in a manner, which I profess not to understand. Having observed, that the ridiculous prejudices of superstition, would by that time have ceased to throw over morals, a corrupt and degrading austerity, he alludes, either to a promiscuous concubinage, which would prevent breeding, or to something else as unnatural. To remove the difficulty in this way, will, surely, in the opinion of most men, be, to destroy that virtue, and purity of manners, which the advocates of equality, and of the perfectibility of man, profess to be the end and object of their views.'

The author now proceeds to examine the other conjectures of Condorcet, concerning the organic perfectibility of man, and the indefinite prolongation of human life; and these he refutes in an ingenious and satisfactory manner, by arguments for which we must refer the reader to the work itself.

Mr. Godwin's system next comes under consideration :-a system, says our author, the most beautiful and engaging that has ever appeared, but yet only a beautiful and engaging phantom, which vanishes when we awaken to real life, and contemplate the true and genuine situation of man on earth.

• Let us suppose,' says our author, all the causes of misery and vice in this island removed. War and contention cease. Unwholesome trades and manufactories do not exist. Crowds no longer collect together in great and pestilent cities for purposes of court intrigue, of commerce, and vicious gratifications. Simple, healthy, and rational amusements take place of drinking, gaming and debauchery. There are no towns sufficiently large to have any prejudicial effects on the human constitution. The greater part of the happy inhabitants of this terrestrial paradise live in hamlets and farm-houses scattered over the face of the country. Every house is clean, airy, sufficiently

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