Looking next to India, once the home of tens of thousands of peaceful and prosperous communities, we see that customary rights have disappeared, and with them millions of small proprietors.*

Turning, now, to the centre of all this system, and tracing the history of the poorer classes, we find a custom of providing for the poor widow and her fatherless children for the lame and the blind for the diseased of body and of mind. With the growth of commerce, custom passes gradually into a law-the statute of Elizabeth establishing the right of such persons to claim support from those around them, and honest poverty being held to be a misfortune, and not a crime. Modern science having proved that matter tends to take its highest form more rapidly than the lower ones of cabbages and potatoes, poverty has become a crime, to be visited by the severest punishment-it being, as we are told, "an indubitable truth, that if," by any exercise of Christian charity, "we stand between the error" which leads to over-population, "and its consequences," which are poverty, wretchedness, and death, we become participators in the crime.†

of man

that

In all these latter countries, trade increases in power from day

* See ante, chap. xiii.

+ See ante, vol. i. p. 417.

Irish competition for the purchase of Irish labor having disappeared, the result was speedily found in the production of a largely augmented competition for the sale of English labor. What has been the effect, is thus shown by one of England's most distinguished writers:

Every one who will take the statistical spectacles off his nose, and look, may discern, in town and country, that the condition of the lower multitude of English laborers approximates more and more to that of the Irish competing with them in all markets; that whatsoever labor, to which mere strength with little skill will suffice, is to be done, will be done, not at the English price, but at an approximation to the Irish price; at a price superior as yet to the Irish, that is, superior to a scarcity of third-rate potatoes for thirty weeks yearly; superior-yet falling, with the arrival of every new steamboat, nearly to an equality with that."-CARLYLE: Chartism.

What is to be the ultimate result of this, is thus shown by a distinguished Scotchman:

"It is not an imaginary, nor perhaps a very distant evil, that our middle classes, with their small capitals, may sink into nothing-may become tradesmen or small dealers, supplying a few great manufacturing classes with the articles of their household consumption, and rearing supernumerary candidates for unnecessary public functions, civil, military, or clerical; and that trade in land, a noblesse of capitalists, and a population of serfs working for them, may come to be the two main constituent parts of our social structure.” -LAING: Notes of a Traveller, p. 154.

to day, and from year to year.

In all of them, consequently,

there is a growing competition for the sale of labor.

Coming now to the United States, we find, during the half century that followed the peace of 1783, a slow, but certain, tendency towards the establishment of commerce. During all that period, consequently, the custom of freedom was gradually ripening into law-the right of the laborer, black or white, to seek competition for the purchase of his services, having been, in that period, fully established in all the States north of Mason and Dixon's line. South of it, too, the tendency was always in the same direction the Virginia Convention of 1832 having fully entertained the question of the right of man to sell his services in open market.

Two years later, however, trade was adopted by the generally dominant party, as being the road to high prosperity; and, since that time, with the exception of the period from 1843 to 1847, the whole energies of the country have been turned in that direction. The result is seen, in the gradual disappearance of the custom of freedom each successive year producing local laws, in virtue of which, both slave and master are deprived of the exercise of customary rights—the one being prohibited from receiving either freedom or instruction, and the other, from granting either.*

Five-and-twenty years since, freedom was regarded as the

*The change of opinion here described, is, perhaps, the most remarkable one that history is required to record, to have occurred in so brief a period. Thirty years since, there were few who doubted the accuracy of the men of the Revolution, in saying to the world: "We hold these truths to be selfevident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Now, the highest judicial authority of the Union decides, that

"It is difficult at this day to realise the state of public opinion respecting that unfortunate class, with the civilised and enlightened portion of the world, at the time of the Declaration of Independence and the adoption of the Constitution; but history shows they have, for more than a century, been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and unfit associates for the white race, either socially or politically, and had no rights which white men were bound to respect; and the black man might be reduced to slavery, bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise. This opinion, at that time, was fixed and universal with the civilised portion of the white race. It was regarded as an axiom in morals, which no one thought of disputing, and every one habitually acted upon it, without doubting for a moment the correctness of the opinion."

custom of the country-slavery existing only as a consequence of local laws. Now, the courts decide, that slavery is the custom -freedom holding its existence under local laws.

Five-and-twenty years since, it was the custom to regard the persons employed in the transaction of the public business, as having a claim to continuance in office, so long as they performed its duties with advantage to the public-leaving to them the free exercise of their private judgment in regard to their political predilections, and as to the choice of their subordinates. Till then, the tendency had been towards the establishment of manufactures, and the consequent competition of private and public demand for mental service. Almost simultaneously, however, with the adoption of the free-trade policy, the custom of freedom. among the public servants passed away-the term of office being fixed by law, with a view to carry into effect the doctrine, that "to the victor belong the spoils.

Competition by individuals, for the purchase of labor, tends, therefore, to decline. Competition for its sale, to the public, tends to increase -the results being seen in the creation of a band of office-seekers, more importunate, and office-holders, more entirely subservient, than can be found in any other civilised country of the world. What the Prætorian bands were to the Roman empire, the office-holders are rapidly becoming, in the United States.

Look where we may, competition for the sale of labor increases in the countries following in the lead of England, and adopting the policy inculcated by her economists. Competition for its purchase increases in those which follow in the lead of France

adopting the policy initiated by Colbert. In the latter, the soil becomes improved - the prices of raw materials and those of finished commodities are steadily approximating agriculture becomes more and more a science-production increases-circulation becomes more rapid and matter tends more and more to take upon itself the form of man; and the more rapid the growth of population, the more abundant becomes the supply of food and clothing. In the former, those prices become more widely separated-agriculture passes away-production diminishesand the disease of over-population becomes more confirmed.

CHAPTER XLVI.

OF POPULATION.

§ 1. "BE fruitful and multiply," said the Lord, "and replenish the earth, and subdue it." That it may be subdued, men must multiply and increase it being only by means of association and combination with his fellow-men, that man acquires power for guiding and directing the forces of nature to his service. In obedience to the divine command it is, then, that matter tends to take upon itself, more and more, the human form - passing from the simple forms of clay and sand, through those more complex, exhibited in vegetable and animal life, and ending in the highly complex ones of the bones, muscles, and brains of men.

The tendency to assume the various forms of life, is greatest at the lowest point of organization—the progeny of microscopic beings counting, at the close of a single week, by millions, even when not by billions, whereas, the period of gestation in the whale and the elephant, is long, while the product rarely exceeds a single individual. Such are the extremes, but the rule holds good at every stage of progress, from the coral insect to the ant, and from the ant to the elephant- thus furnishing the law, that fecundity and development are in the inverse ratio of each other. In virtue of that fixed and certain law, man, "the crown and roof of all things," should increase less rapidly than any other animal whatsoever, and carrying out the same idea the fecundity of the human race itself should diminish, as the peculiarly human faculties are more and more stimulated into action, and as the MAN becomes more and more developed.*

The periods within which the existing population of the prin

* "The plant and the animal are not required to become a different thing from what they already are at the moment of their birth. Their idea, as the philosophers would say, is realized in its fulness by the fact alone of their material appearance, and of their physical organization. The end of their existence is attained, for they are only of a physical nature. But with man it is quite otherwise. Man, created in the image of God, is of a free and

cipal nations duplicates itself, varies greatly- France requiring more than a century, and Great Britain more than half a century, while the duplication of American numbers is accomplished in little more than thirty years.

*

So far as regards the ultimate destiny of the human race, it is, however, of small importance whether, in obedience to fixed and immutable laws, the duplication has been arranged to take effect in 30, 50, or 100 years- the only difference being, that under the first, there must be, some 700 years hence, a million of persons on the earth for each one that now exists, whereas, in

moral nature. The physical man, however admirable may be his organization, is not the true man; he is not an aim, but a means; he is not an end, like the animal, but a beginning. There is another, new-born, but destined to grow up in him, and to unfold the moral and religious nature, until he attain the perfect stature of his master and pattern, who is Christ. It is the intellectual and the moral man, the spiritual man."-GUYOT: Earth and Man.

* In 1820, the white population was ............................................................... By 1850, it had become

Increase

8,107,000 20,169,000

12,062,000

In the same period, however, the immigration had been large-the number arriving being as follows:

Of these, the number was small, that had not passed the period of infancy, while more than two-thirds of the whole were between the ages of 15 and 40, the period at which the animal forces are at the highest. Admitting that each pair imported had produced but a single child, in excess of the loss by death, we should obtain, as the addition resulting from immigration, no less than 3,732,297. Adding to this the Spanish population of Texas, California, and New Mexico, we have a total of probably 3,900,000. Deducting that quantity from the total increase, we obtain an almost exact duplication in thirty years.

That this estimate of the effects of immigration is certainly below the truth, will be seen by the following facts, for which we are indebted to the admirable vital statistics collected and published by the Government of Massachusetts.

The total population of that State, in 1855, was 1,122,463-886,571 being native born, and 235,892 foreigners, a large proportion of whom were Irish. The marriages in that year were 12,329. In 954 of them, one of the parties were foreign, while in 4269, both were so- the proportion of purely native being but as 4 to 3, whereas, their proportion of the population is as nearly 4 to 1. The births were 32,845-the parentage having been ascertained in relation to 31,273. Of these, 1617 were the product of mixed couples, and 13,708 of foreign ones-making a total of 15,325, or nearly half of the entire number.