price. And, with respect to the relative price of products, it is in all cases determined by the intensity of the desire, the degree of utility in each product for the time being. We may safely take it for granted, that mankind in general will not barter an object of more, for one of less urgent necessity. In a season of agricultural scarcity, a larger quantity of furniture will be given for a smaller quantity of human aliment; but it is invariably true, that whenever barter takes place, the object given on one side is worth that given on the other, and that the one is procurable for the other.*

Trade and barter, as we have seen above, adapt the products to the general 'nature of the demand. The objects, whether of food, of raiment, or of habitation, for which the strongest desire is felt, are of course the most in request; and the wants of each family or individual, are more or less fully satisfied, in proportion to the ability to purchase these objects; which ability depends upon the productive means and exertion of each respectively; in plain terms, upon the revenue of each respectively. Thus, in the end, if we sift this matter to the bottom, we shall find, that families, and nations, which are but aggregations of families, subsist wholly on their own products; and that the amount of product in each case necessarily limits the numbers of those who can subsist upon it.

Such animals as are incapable of providing for future exigencies, after they are engendered, if they do not fall a prey to man, or some of their fellow brutes, perish the moment they experience an imperative want, which they have not the means of gratifying. But man has so many future wants to provide for, that he could not answer the end of his creation, without a certain degree of providence and forethought: and this provident turn can alone preserve the human species from part of the evils it would necessarily endure, if its numbers were to be perpetually reduced by the process of destructive violence.t

Although all products are necessary to the social existence of man, the necessity of food being of all others most urgent and unceasing, and of most frequent recurrence, objects of aliment are justly placed first in the catalogue of the means of human existence. They are not all, however, the produce of the national territorial surface; but are procurable by commerce as well as by internal agriculture; and many countries contain a greater number of inhabitants, than could subsist upon the produce of their land. Nay, the importation of another commodity may be equivalent to an importation of an article of food. The export of wines and brandies to the north of Europe is almost equivalent to an export of bread; for wine and brandy, in great measure, supply the place of beer and spirits distilled from grain, and thus allow the grain, which would otherwise be employed in the preparation of beer or spirits, to be reserved for that of bread.

†The practice of infanticide in China proves, that the local prejudices of custom and of religion there counteract the foresight which tends to check the increase of population: and one can not but deplore such prejudices; for the human misery resulting from the destruction is great, in proportion as its object is more fully developed, and more capable of sen

Yet, notwithstanding the forethought ascribed to man, and the restraints imposed on him by reason, legislation, and social habits, the increase of population is always evidently co-extensive, and even something more than co-extensive, with the means of subsistence. It is a melancholy but an undoubted fact, that, even in the most thriving countries, part of the population annually dies of mere want. Not that all who perish from want absolutely die of hunger; though this calamity is of more frequent occurrence than is generally supposed.* I mean only that they have not at command all the necessaries of life, and die for want of some part of those articles of necessity. A sick or disabled person may, perhaps, require nothing more than a little rest, or medical advice, together with, perhaps, some simple remedy to set him up again; but the requisite rest, or advice, or remedy, are denied, or not afforded. A child may require the attentions of the mother, but the mother perhaps may be taken away to labour, by the imperious calls of necessity; and the child perish, through accident, neglect, or disease. It is a fact well-established by the researches of all who have turned their attention to statistics, that, out of an equal number of children of wealthy and sation. For this reason it would be still more barbarous and irrational policy to multiply wars, and other means of human destruction, in order to increase the enjoyments of the survivors; because the destructive scourge would affect human beings in a state more perfect, more susceptible of feeling and suffering, and arrived at a period of life, when the mature display of his faculties renders man more valuable to himself and to others.

The Hospice de Bicétre, near Paris, contains, on the average, five or six thousand poor. In the scarcity of the year 1795, the governors could not afford them food, either so good or so abundant as usual; and I am assured by the house-steward of the establishment, that at that period almost all the inmates died.

It would appear from the returns given in a tract entitled "Observations on the Condition of the Labouring Classes," by J. Barton, that the average of deaths, in seven distinct manufacturing districts of England, has been proportionate to the dearness, or, in other words, the scarcity of subsistence. I subjoin an extract from his statements:

From the same returns it appears, that the scarcity occasioned less mortality in the agricultural districts. The reason is manifest: the labourer is there more commonly paid in kind, and the high sale-price of the product enabled the farmer to give a high purchase-price for labour. (a)

(a) The latter reason is not very satisfactory: for the total receipts of the corn-growers are probably not larger in years of scarcity, than in those of abundance. T.

of indigent parents, at least twice as many of the latter die in infancy as of the former. In short, scanty or unwholesome diet, the insufficient change of linen, the want of warm and dry clothing, or of fuel, ruin the health, undermine the constitution, and sooner or later bring multitudes of human beings to an untimely end; and all, that perish in consequence of a want beyond their means to supply, may be said to die of want.

Thus, to man, particularly in a forward state of civilization, a variety of products, some of them in the class of what have been denominated immaterial products, are necessaries of existence; these are multiplied in a degree proportionate to the desire for them, respectively, because its intensity causes a proportionate elevation of their price: and it may be laid down as a general maxim, that the population of a state is always proportionate to the sum of its production in every kind.* This is a truth acknowledged by most writers on political economy, however various and discordant their opinions on most other points.†

It appears to me, however, that one very natural consequence, deducible from this maxim, has escaped their obser

Not but that accidental causes may sometimes qualify these general rules. A country, where property is very unequally distributed, and where a few individuals consume produce enough for the maintenance of numbers, will doubtless subsist a smaller population, than a country of equal production, where wealth is more equally diffused. The very opulent are notoriously averse to the burthen of a family; and the very indigent are unable to rear one.

c. 10

+ Vide Stewart, On Political Economy, book i. c. 4. Quesnay, Encyclopèdie, art. Grains. Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix. liv. 18. c. 10. and liv. 23. Buffon, ed. de Bernard, tom iv. p. 266. Forbonnais, Principes et Observations, p. 39. 45, Hume, Essays, part 2. Ess. 2. Euvres de Poivre, p. 145, 146. Condillac, Le Commerce et le Gouvernement, part 1. c. 24, 25. Verri, Reflexions sur l'Economie Politique, c. 210. Mirabeau, Ami des Hommes, tom. i. p. 40. Raynal, Histoire de l'Establissement, liv. 11. s. 23. Chastellux, De la Félicité Publique, tom. ii. p. 205. Necker, Administration, des Finances de France, c. 9. and Notes sur l'Eloge de Colbert. Condorcet, Notes sur Voltaire, ed. de Kepl. tom. xlv. p. 60. Smith, Wealth of Nations, book 1. c. 8. 11. Garnier, Abrégé Elémentaire, part. 1. c. 3. and Preface de sa Traduction de Smith. Canard, Principes d'Economie Politique, p. 133. Godwin, (a) On Political Justice, book viii. c. 3. Clavière, De la France et des Etats Unis. ed. 2. p. 60. 315. Brown-Duignan, Essay on the Principles of National Economy, p. 97. Lond. 1776. Beccaria, Elementi di Economia Publica, par. prim. c. 2. 3. Gorani, Récherches sur la Science du Gouvernement, tom. ii. c. 7. Sismondi, Nouv. Prin. d'Econ. Pol. liv. vii. c. 1. et seq. Vide also, more especially, Malthus, Essay on Population, a work of considerable research; the sound and powerful arguments of which would put this matter beyond all dispute, if it indeed had been doubted.

(a) This writer has lately adventured a refutation of the work of Malthus; but his arguments, though urged with sufficient ingenuity and confidence, have made but few converts to his opinions. T.

vation; which is, that nothing can permanently increase population, except the encouragement and advance of production; and that nothing can occasion its permanent diminution, but such circumstances as attack production in its sources.

The Romans were for ever making regulations to repair the loss of population, occasioned by their state of perpetual external warfare. (a) Their censors preached up matrimony; their laws offered premiums and honours to plurality of children: but these measures were fruitless. There is no difficulty in getting children; the difficulty lies in maintaining them. They should have enlarged their internal production, instead of spreading devastation amongst their neighbours. All their boasted regulations did not prevent the effectual depopulation of Italy and Greece, even long before the inroads of the barbarous northern hordes.*

The edict of Louis XIV. in favour of marriage, awarding pensions to those parents, who should have ten, and larger ones to those, who should have twelve children, was attended with no better success. The premiums, that monarch held out in a thousand ways to indolence and uselessness, were much more adverse, than such poor encouragements could be conducive, to the increase of population.

It is the fashion to assert, that the discovery of the New World has tended to depopulate Old Spain; whereas her depopulation has resulted from the vicious institutions of her government, and the small amount of her internal product, in proportion to her territorial extent. The most effectual encouragement to population is, the activity of industry, and the consequent multiplication of the national products. It abounds in all industrious districts; and, when a virgin soil happens to co-operate with the exertions of a community, whence idleness is altogether discarded, its rapid increase is truly astonishing. In the United States of America, population has been doubling in the course of twenty years.

For the same reasons, although temporary calamities may sweep off multitudes, yet, if they leave untainted the sources of reproduction, they are sure to prove more afflicting to humanity, than fatal to population. It soon trenches again upon the limit, assigned by the aggregate of annual production. Messance has given some very curious calculations, whereby it appears, that, after the ravages occasioned by the famous

• Vide Livii Hist. lib. vi. Plutarchi Moralia, xxx. De defectu oraculoStrabonis, lib. vii.

rum.

Ustariz has remarked, that the most populous provinces of Spain are those, from which there has been the greatest emigration to America.

(a) The examples of England, France, and the old states of the American union, prove, that, neither war nor emigration can cause any permanent reduction of a national population. T.

plague of Marseilles in 1720, marriages throughout Provence were more fruitful than before. The Abbé d'Expilly comes to the same conclusion. The same effect was observable in Prussia, after the plague of 1710. Although it had swept off a third of the population, the tables of Sussmilch show the number of births, which, before the plague, amounted annually to about 26,000, to have advanced in the year following, 1711, to no less than 32,000. It might have been supposed, that the number of marriages, after so terrible a mortality, would have been at least considerably reduced; on the contrary, it actually doubled; a strong indication of the tendency of population to keep always on a level with the national resources. The loss of population is not the greatest calamity resulting from such temporary visitations; the first and greatest is, the misery they occasion to the human race. Great multitudes can not be swept from the land of the living by pestilence, famine, or war, without the endurance of a vast deal of suffering and agony, by numbers of sentient beings; besides the pain, distress, and misery of the survivors; the destitution of widows, orphans, brothers, sisters, and parents. It is a subject of additional regret, if, among the rest, there happen to fall one or two of those superior and enlightened men, whose single talents and virtues have more effect upon the happiness and wealth of nations, than the groveling industry of a million of ordinary mortals.

Moreover, a great loss of human beings, arrived at maturity, is certainly a loss of so much acquired wealth or capital; for every grown person is an accumulated capital, representing all the advances expended during a course of many years, in training and making him what he is. A bantling a day old by no means replaces a man of twenty; and the well-known expression of the Prince de Conde, on the victorious field of Senef, was equally absurd and unfeeling.t

The destructive scourges of the human species, therefore, if not injurious to population, are at least an outrage on humanity; on which account alone, their authors are highly criminal.t

* Quoted by Malthus, in his Essay on Popul. vol. ii.

"Une nuit de Paris reparera tout cela." It requires the care and expenditure of twenty successive years to replace the full-grown man, that a cannon ball has destroyed in a moment. The destruction of the human race by war is far more extensive than is commonly imagined. The ravage of a cultivated district, the plunder of dwelling-houses, the demolition of establishments of industry, the consumption of capital, &c. &c. deprive numbers of the means of livelihood, and cause many more to perish, than are left on the field of battle.

Upon this principle, no capital improvement of the medicinal or chirurgical art, like that of vaccination for instance, can permanently influence national population; yet its influence upon the lot of humanity may be very considerable; for it may operate powerfully to preserve beings already far advanced in age, in strength, and in knowledge: whom to replace,