forces which maintain the order of the solar system-his progress towards civilization, being always in the ratio of the intensity of the attractive and counter-attractive forces to which he is thus subjected.* The greater that intensity, the more rapid is the societary circulation- the greater the competition for the purchase of labor and labor's products-and the greater the tendency towards development of the human faculties, and towards the production of the real MAN, as distinguished from the merely animal man which constitutes the subject treated of in RicardoMalthusian books.

The erection of a little log cabin, in the wilderness, furnishes strong inducement to the next succeeding settler, to place himself in its immediate neighborhood. Adding to the cabin, the possession of a plough and a horse, the attraction is much increased. The two settlers being now associated, others are attracted in that direction the attractive force increasing geometrically, as the men, the ploughs, and the horses, increase arithmetically. Population and wealth further advancing, the store appears nucleus of the little village. The church and the school-house being added, the effect is widely felt their influence, however, diminishing with distance, until it disappears before the counterattractions of another settlement. Such is now the course of things in all the newly-settled countries of America, and such must it have been in all the older ones of Europe.

the

§ 2. 2. “ Nature," as we are told, and as we have reason to know, "goes on, adding perfection to perfection, from the poles to the tropics, except in man." So, however, does she, as she passes downwards, from the snowy peaks of the Himalaya, to the richer soils by which they are surrounded, whether her route be towards Siberian plains, or Gangetic valleys-towards Chinese swamps, or Ægean shores - the world at large being little more than a repetition, on a grander scale, of what is seen in each and every of its divisions, great and small.

The whole was given for man's use to be by him subdued; and yet, how small is the portion he has, as yet, subjected to his use! Look almost where we may, the richer soils remain unoc* See ante, vol. ii., p. 268.

† GUYOT: Earth and Man, p. 253.

cupied Switzerland abounding in population, while the rich lands of the lower Danube are lying waste men gathering together on the slopes of the Andes, while the rich soils of the Orinoco and the Amazon remain in a state of nature - France and Germany, Italy and Ireland, presenting, on a smaller scale, a state of things precisely similar. Seeing these facts, we are led, and that too necessarily, to the belief, that man has made but little progress in the execution of the divine command; and yet, turn in what direction we may, we are met by the assertion that all the poverty and wretchedness of mankind is due to the one great error in the divine laws, in virtue of which, population tends to increase more rapidly than the food and other raw materials required for the satisfaction of his wants, and the maintenance of his powers.

"America," says a distinguished writer of our day, "lies glutted with its vegetable wealth, unworked, solitary. Its immense forests, its savannas, every year cover its soil with their remains, which, accumulated during the long ages of the world, form that deep bed of vegetable mould, that precious soil, awaiting only the hand of man to work out all the wealth of its inexhaustible fertility." Looking to the tropics, every where, we see so rank a luxuriance of growth, that the works of man are scarcely abandoned before they commence to disappear under trees and foliage.‡ A space of 100 square metres, containing 100 banana plants, gives, according to Humboldt, more than 2000 kilogrammes of nourishing substance the quantity of nutritive matter obtained. being as 133 to 1, when compared with land employed in raising wheat, and as 44 to 1, when compared with potatoes. In Ecuador, this wonderful vegetation never ceases both the plough and the sickle being required at every season of the year. So is it in Venezuela, and in the Peruvian valleys- barley, rice, and sugar, growing in the highest perfection, and the climate permitting both planting and reaping throughout the year. The valley of the Orinoco, alone, has been stated to be capable of furnishing subsistence for the whole human race. Of bread-fruit trees, but three

* The accounts of recent travellers unite in showing, that, even in China, large quantities of highly fertile land remain uncultivated.

are required for furnishing abundant food for a full-grown man.* Rice yields an hundred fold, and maize no less than three hundred fold.

Nevertheless, these rich lands, being almost entirely unoccupied, are scarcely at all available for human purposes. Why? Because nature is there all-powerful-it being there we find the greatest amount of heat, motion, and force. Are they for ever to remain so useless? In answer, it may be said, that the obstacles to their occupation are little greater than, but two centuries since, stood in the way of the reclamation of the now rich meadows of Lancashire; or those which, even now, are presented to the Western emigrant, when seeking to reduce to cultivation the richest prairie lands. In all these cases, the early man is weak for attack— nature being strong for resistance. From year to year, he becomes more fitted for combination with his neighbor man, with constant growth in his powers, and constant decline in her'seach and every step in his progress, from the day on which he subjugates the horse, to that on which he tames the electric force, enabling him more thoroughly to turn against nature, such of her own great powers as he has qualified himself to master. He is constantly battering at her gates, and overthrowing her walls she, on her part, finding them crumbling to atoms about her ears, and with a rapidity that increases with each successive hour.

With every step in this direction, there is a diminution in the quantity of muscular force required for the labors of the fieldthe mind gradually superseding the unassisted arm that had been, at first, employed. With each, there is an increase of power to cultivate the richer soils, whether of the tropical or the temperate regions of the earth. Where is this to stop? Will it stop? Can it be, that the richest portion of the earth is to remain for ever in its present condition of utter uselessness? That it can be so, may well be doubted by those who believe that nothing has been made in vain; and who find in the constantly-increasing utilization of the materials of which the earth is composed, and of the

* "If an inhabitant of the South Sea has planted ten bread-fruit trees during his life, he has fulfilled his duty towards his family, as completely as a farmer among us, who has every year ploughed and sown, reaped and threshed; nay, he has not only provided bread for his lifetime, but left his children a capital in trees."-Cook: Voyages.

† See ante, vol. i., p. 123.

‡ Ibid, p. 114.

various products of the earth, evidence that such is certainly the

It is not, however, to the richer soils alone, we are to look for extension of the field of human operations- all experience proving the existence of a tendency towards the gradual equalization of the various soils of which the earth has been composed. In France, as has been shown, it exhibits itself in a most striking manner; and France is but the world at large, in miniature.† The railroad, by facilitating access to them, has already brought into activity large bodies of land that had before remained unused; and it is destined, ultimately, to do for whole provinces, states, kingdoms, and the world at large, what it has already done for portions of the soils of England, France, and the United States. Looking at all these facts, it is safe to say, that the power of the earth to afford subsistence to man is practically unlimited.

§3. How are all these lands to be ultimately rendered available for human purposes? The answer to this question is found in the fact, that manufactures always precede, and never follow, the creation of a real agriculture. In the absence of the former, all attempts at cultivation are limited to the work of tearing out and exporting the soil in the form of rude products - the country that pursues this policy, always ending in the exportation or annihi

*Tropical nature cannot be conquered and subdued, save by civilized men, armed with all the might of discirline, intelligence, and of skilful industry. It is, then, from the ninern continents that those of the south await their deliverance: is by the help of the civilized men of the temperate continents, that it shall be vouchsafed to the man of the tropical lands to enter into the movement of universal progress and improvement, wherein mankind should share.”-GUYOT: Earth and Man, p. 330.

"I have seen as hard work, real bone and muscle work, done by citizens of the United Kingdom in the East, as was ever achieved in the cold West, and all upon rice and curry-not curry and rice-in which the rice has formed the real meal, and the curry has merely helped to give it a relish, as a sort of substantial Kitchener's zest, or Harvey's sauce. I have seen, likewise, Moormen, Malabars, and others of the Indian laboring-classes, perform a day's work that would terrify a London porter, or coal-whipper, or a country navvy, or ploughman; and under the direct rays of a sun, that has made a wooden platform too hot to stand on, in thin shoes, without literally dancing with pain, as I have done many a day, within six degrees of the line."-Household Words.

This passage is copied from the Seaboard Slave States, of Mr. Olmsted, who furnishes various facts, of his own knowledge, in proof of the efficiency of free white labor, in the States of the extreme South.

+ See ante, vol. ii., p. 64. Of the soil of France, one-sixth, or about 24,000,000 acres, is, as yet, totally unoccupied.

lation of men. Give to Turkey the power to develop her vast natural resources enable her to make her own cloth and a real agriculture will then arise, that will render the plains of Thrace and Macedonia once more productive. Place in Brazil the machinery required for utilizing her various ores-for making her own iron and for converting her raw materials into clothing and she, too, will soon exhibit to the world a state of things widely different from that which now exists.* Let Carolina have the means of converting her cotton into cloth, and her millions of acres of rich meadow lands will soon be made productive. Enable Illinois to mine her coal, her lead, and her iron ore, and her people will cease to see the product of the soil diminishing from year to year, as now it does. Local centres of attraction being thus created in all those countries, each will then become a competitor with France and England, Belgium and Germany, for the purchase of labor, skill, and talent of all descriptions; and the greater that competition, the greater will be the tendency towards absorbing the laborers of all these countries. the centrifugal and centripetal forces then tending daily towards a more perfect balance, with growing power, on the part of all, to make their own election whether to go abroad or remain at home. Whatever tends to invite immigration, is a measure that looks towards freedom. Whatever it may be that tends to compel emigration, its tendency is towards slavery.

Early Grecian colonization, as the reader has already seen, was a result of counter attraction, and therefore altogether voluntary. Later, when trade and war had become the sole occupations of the people, and when poverty and wretchedness were gradually extending themselves throughout the various classes of the state, colonization wholly lost its voluntary character the form it then assumed being that of expeditions fitted out at the public cost, for supplying the places, and taking possession of the lands, of earlier colonists, who were now in course of being ruined by means of measures adopted for the maintenance of the evergrasping central power. I

Under the first of these, local centres, teeming with activity and life, were everywhere created. Directly the reverse of this

* See ante, vol. ii. p. 229.

† See ante, vol. i. p. 285.

See BоECKн, Public Economy of Athens, chap. xviii.