OF THE SUBJECT. -OBJECTS AND PLAN OF THE WORK.

By Over-population is to be understood, throughout the following pages, that condition of a country in which part of the inhabitants, although ablebodied and capable of labour, are permanently unable to earn a sufficiency of the necessaries of life. A country is not necessarily overpeopled merely because it contains a greater number of inhabitants than its own soil can supply with food and clothing, for the natives may nevertheless obtain abundant supplies from abroad; and provided the supplies be adequate and regular, it matters not from whence they come. Neither is population always excessive where people are to be found in a state of destitution, for this destitution may proceed solely from indolence, or from bodily or mental infirmity. But wherever persons, able as well as willing to work, are for many years

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together unable to procure by labour a competent subsistence, it is clear that there are too many of them, and that the land they inhabit is overpeopled. Further, population may be excessive without being dense. In almost In almost every community, the owners of the soil, or of any considerable amount of other property, are a minority, and many of them must possess a greater quantity, or the means of producing or of purchasing a greater quantity, of food and of other necessaries than they require for their own consumption. Few however will be at the trouble of producing more than they themselves can use, unless they can exchange the surplus for something else. But many of their countrymen have nothing to offer in exchange save personal services, and if there be more applicants for employment than the rich are disposed to employ, the services of all will not be accepted, or if accepted, will be very scantily remunerated, and either food enough for all will not be raised, or when raised, part of it will be sent for sale to a foreign market. In either case, the labouring class is larger than the stock of food to which it has access can properly maintain; and the country, however thinly inhabited it may be, and although it may be only half cultivated, or may export provisions, is nevertheless overpeopled. It must be observed, however, that in order to indicate overpopulation, the distress of the working class must be of long continuance, for merely temporary distress may be produced by famine, commercial vicissitudes, or other accidents, in a country where

a livelihood may ordinarily be obtained without difficulty.

After this explanation, over-population may be shortly defined to be a deficiency of employment for those who live by labour, or a redundancy of the labouring class above the number of persons that the fund applied to the remuneration of labour can maintain in comfort. Of all the evils by which a nation can be afflicted, this is perhaps the worst. The ravages of war and pestilence are only occasional, and may be soon repaired; a tyrant's caprice and cruelty are felt by comparatively few; and no government, however bad, which does not condemn the mass of its subjects to positive destitution, can avoid leaving them the means of considerable enjoyment. But the bulk of every community consists of persons entirely dependent on their own industry, and where these are too numerous to earn a competent subsistence for themselves and their families, competition takes place amongst them each, in his anxiety to obtain employment, offers to accept lower wages than he requires for his comfortable maintenance, and, if the competition be sufficiently severe, will take the lowest pittance upon which life can be supported. Entire sections of the labouring class are thus reduced to extreme and almost hopeless misery. Hunger, cold, endurance of every sort of hardship, become the habitual portion of multitudes, nor are the evils of their condition limited to physical sufferings. Their moral debasement generally keeps pace with their social degradation. The desperate struggle they

must maintain for existence, their cruel privations, the scenes and practices with which they must become familiar, seldom fail to harden their dispositions, and to make them deceitful, brutal, and dissolute; while the impossibility of materially benefiting themselves by any exertions of their own renders them indolent, and indolence aggravates their wretchedness. Neither has this state of things any tendency to correct itself. Whatever point population may attain, it can with equal ease at least maintain itself there, and the evils of its too great density may be not less lasting than severe.

Now, if this be the condition of the working class, it is no proof of national prosperity that the rest of the people are wealthy and civilised. A nation may be pre-eminent in power and grandeur, and equally distinguished in the arts of war and peace; native industry and foreign commerce may supply in abundance every requisite for ease and luxury, and to these solid materials of enjoyment may be superadded all the resources of literature and science: still, if these advantages contribute only to the happiness of the few, while the many are sunk in bodily and mental destitution, the lot of such a people is any thing but an enviable one. With all their civilisation and refinement, their condition would not be ill exchanged for that of the rudest horde of wandering Tartars, whose numbers are better proportioned to their means of subsistence. The balance of happiness is apparently in favour of the latter. The conveniences of life may be almost unknown to them, and they