of Ireland, has probably grown out of the privileges granted to the English and Scottish emigrants, by whom Ulster was colonised in James the First's time, to induce them to settle in so barbarous a region. Although founded solely on prescription, its operation is almost as effectual as if it were recognised by law, and its value to its possessor is self-evident. It stimulates him to exertion, by securing to him the entire produce of his additional labour, and enables him to procure sundry substantial advantages, the desire to retain which is only another name for prudence. A cottier's sons have the same power in Ulster as in Munster or Connaught of dividing their father's holding, but they see clearly that they cannot maintain separate families on their respective shares without sacrificing the few comforts they have been accustomed to. They seek, therefore, for some additional means of livelihood, and do not in general marry until they find it. The cottage farms are consequently transmitted from one generation to another without diminution of size, and population only keeps pace with the increase of means for its support. The only county in Ulster to which this description does not apply is Donegal, in which, as the indigenous Celtic inhabitants were never disturbed, the tenant-right has not been introduced, except partially, and in an imperfect shape. The peasantry of that county, ever since they became occupiers of land, have been kept as poor as their brethren in the most wretched districts of Connaught, and their numbers

have increased as fast, and the partition of their holdings has been carried on to the same extent.

While it is thus clear, even from observation of the state of Ireland, that facilities for obtaining the tenancy of land give no excessive impulse to population, except among a people rendered desperate by misery, it is equally evident that familiarity with wretchedness, independently of other circumstances, is the most powerful of incentives to early marriages. The Commissioners of Inquiry into the Condition of the Irish Poor in 1836, found it universally admitted that the most destitute were also the most ready to marry, and that provided they could scrape together halfpence enough for the priest's fee, they would not always wait even till they could get a roof over their heads, and potatoes and whisky for the wedding feast. The witnesses only differed as to the reasons for such impatience. Whatever might be the motives, however, of the candidates for matrimony,-whether they were anxious to have children to take care of them in their old age, or thought that they could not fare worse coupled than they did singly, or whether they did not think of the future at all, is not of much consequence. Their conduct is equally corroborative of the opinion in support of which it is cited, and, like the other statements in this and the two preceding Chapters, points to the conclusion that the original cause of over-population is almost invariably misery.

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CHAPTER VII.

REMEDIES FOR OVER-POPULATION IN ENGLAND AND WALES.

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Restrictions on the Marriages of the Poor. Soundness of the Theory of Malthus. Its Incompleteness. Consideration of various Schemes for the Cure of Poverty. — Vindication of the New Poor Law. Emigration. Improvement of Agriculture. Free Trade. - Ability of foreign Countries to supply Great Britain with Provisions. Imperative Obligation on foreign Merchants to accept British Goods in exchange. Groundlessness of the Opinion that Cheapness of Food would occasion a Fall of Wages. Examination of Objections to Free Trade in Provisions. - Loss of Revenue

Dependence on foreign Countries. Reduction of Rents. Possible Extent of such Reduction. - Circumstances by which it would be compensated. Inadmissibility of the Objection that Free Trade might lower Rents. -Effect of Free Trade on the Demand for agricultural Labour — Subdivision of Farms. -Manner in which that Subdivision would affect Land Owners and agricultural Labourers. Superior Productiveness of small Farms. High Rents obtainable for them Great Amount of human Labour required for their Cultivation. Cottage Allotments.-Their Advantages. —Examination of their supposed Tendency to create an excessive agricultural Population.- Peculiar Circumstances which have led to the minute Partition of Land in Ireland. Dissimilar Condition of England. -Actual Results of the Occupation of Land by the Peasantry in some Parts of England. - Its Influence in preventing and curing Pauperism, and in checking improvident Marriages. Tendency of Cottage Allotments. to promote the social and moral Improvement of the Occupants.

To cure over-population, is to restore the proper proportion between the number of labourers and

the fund for the remuneration of labour. Either the first must be diminished, or the second must be augmented. But it is not sufficient to cure,—we must also guard against a return of the disease. Population must if possible be prevented from increasing beyond the means of subsistence. This can only be done by restraining people from marrying until they can bear the expenses of a family. Whatever other remedies may be prescribed, therefore, restrictions upon the marriages of the poor are an indispensable part of the regimen to be observed. It requires some courage, in these days, to exhibit such principles, the very essence of Malthusianism, in all their naked simplicity. They are,

indeed, as clear, and one would have thought as undeniable, as the sun at mid-day; but they have been so sternly denounced, and so mercilessly ridiculed, that few are now found bold enough to avow them. It is not merely benevolent declaimers or fanatical zealots who inveigh against the "detestable hard-heartedness of the system" that would keep people single until they can afford to indulge in the "luxury of marriage"*, who call it "an impeachment of God's providence"† to suppose that population can outrun subsistence, and in this fiftyninth century esteem it a sin to disobey the ante

* These expressions are Southey's, and occur in an article in the Quarterly Review, vol. viii. p. 326.

See the late Mr. Sadler's "Law of Population," or rather an article in No. 102. of the Edinburgh Review, in which the most brilliant writer of the age has condescended to demolish Mr. Sadler's absurdities.

diluvian injunction, "to be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth."* Even hard-headed and hard-hearted political economists shrink from one whom they were once proud to hail as a colleague. Mr. M'Culloch, the Coryphæus of the band, stigmatises the theory of Malthus "as a striking instance of the abuse of general principles † ; and Mr. Laing contends, that to give the name of moral restraint to prudential abstinence from marriage is to "confound prudence and morality," and to "overturn the land-marks of human virtue."† I will not be drawn into a regular defence of Mr. Malthus against his opponents, though the temptation is great to show that the poor have no more right than the rich to indulge in luxuries which they cannot afford, and that it is decidedly immoral to bring children into the world to starve.§ I will confine myself to one or two observations. Malthus asserts

* Mr. Alison has taken this for the text of his Discourse on the "Principles of Population."

† Principles of Political Economy.

Preface.

Residence in Norway, p. 481. Notes of a Traveller, p. 338. § Mr. Laing is not to be put down by authority, or I would quote Milton and Dean Swift against him. The former makes Eve exclaim:

"Miserable it is

To be to others cause of misery,

Our own begotten, and of our loins to bring

Into this cursed world a woful race.”—Par. Lost, book x.

And the latter informs us that "the Lilliputians think nothing can be more unjust than for people, in subservience to their own appetites, to bring children into the world, and leave the burden of supporting them on the public."-Voyage to Lilliput, chap. vi.