preserved let our charters of equality be held inviolate—and the working people will have little to do but to lend their common aid to inspire wisdom and integrity into the public councils, and snatch from the hands of usurping demagogues the truncheon of political power.

The best, and indeed the only conclusive evidence as to the ability of the earth to sustain its population, is to be had from history and experience. According to the best authorities, it appears, that the present age has the smallest population of any, since the commencement of historical record. In the time of Julius Cæsar, it is computed that the number of mankind was fifty times more numerous than at present: and when it is considered, how inferior were the ancients in all the arts and instruments of production, compared with the moderns, we may form some idea of the vast disparity which this disproportion between the populousness of the two periods really amounts to. Mr. Hume controverts this superiority of ancient population, because slavery prevailed in Rome and Italy; without duly considering that the countries which furnished that immense number of slaves, must have been overstocked with a highly redundant population; namely, Syria, Cilicia, Cappadocia, the lesser Asia, Thrace, and Egypt. The fact, however, of the greater populousness of the ancient world, is based on the concurrent authorities of all the standard authors of Greece and Rome; without including the sacred writings, which so conclusively corroborate the wonderful redundancy of the human race at those early periods. The writer alluded to, with his usual disposition to scepticism, in vain attempts to reason away the force of the ancient authorities; but frequently feels himself compelled to admit that the

circumstances of society in those ages were more favourable to population, than in modern times. In viewing the relative advantages and disadvantages of the ancients and moderns, in respect to de propagation of the species, he remarks: "Before the increase of the Roman power, or rather till its full establishment, almost all the nations, which are the scene of ancient history, were divided into small territories or petty commonwealths, where of course, a great equality of fortune prevailed, and the centre of the government was, always very near its frontiers.

"This was the situation of affairs not only in Greece and Italy, but also in Spain, Gaul, Germany, Africa, and a great part of, the lesser Asia; and it must be owned, that no institution could be more favourable to the propagation of mankind. For though a man of an overgrown fortune, not being able to consume more than other, must share it with those who serve and attend him; yet their possession being precarious, they have not the same encouragement to marry, as if each had a small fortune, secure and independent. Enormous cities are, besides, destructive to society; beget vice and disorder of all kinds, starve the remoter provinces, and even starve themselves, by the prices to which they raise all provisions. Where each man had his little house and field to himself, and each county had its capital, free and independent; what a happy situation of mankind! How favourable to industry and agriculture; to marriage and propagation. The prolific virtue of men, were it to act in its full extent, without that restraint which poverty and necessity impose on it, would double the number every generation; and nothing surely can give it more liberty, than such small commonwealths, and such an equality of fortune

among the citizens. All small states naturally produce equality of fortune, because they afford no opportuni⚫ties of great increase; but small commonwealths much more, by that division of power and authority which is essential to them."

Not nature, then, but man, in the wild excess of his passions, creates an artificial scarcity of the fruits of the earth, and permits his avarice and rapacity to erect unjust barriers to marriage and propagation.

The populousness of ancient nations, being proved superior to those of the modern, and having few, or no accounts of devastating famines in those early ages, the ability of the earth to support an augmented number of the human family, is clearly demonstrated, from actual experience recorded in authentic history.

› But a stronger argument is to be found, in the immense uncultivated tracts of fertile lands, scattered over the two continents of America, and as the necessaries of life will at all periods, like money, find their level, no portion of the world will ever suffer, whilst an overflowing granary exists, however remote may be its locality.

All barbarous countries are sparsely populated, and this will, perhaps, account for the superiority of the ancient states on this score. As nations become civilized, the economy of science, and the assistance of art, are brought to bear upon the means of production, and the increase of commodities, which will naturally lead to an increase of population. There is ample testimony to prove, that the middle ages, when semi-barbarism overspread Europe, were but thinly populated; and that in proportion as the rays of knowledge penetrated the gloom, and the arts of life mollified and improved mankind, that population took a fresh

impulse, and soon flooded the limits of empires, exhausting the limited means of subsistence, which the consumption of luxuries had left to the general stock of industry.

There is an interval in all countries, between what may be termed an age of general abundance and comfort, and one of ostentation, luxury, refinement, and sensuality. In this interval, population will want none of the elements necessary to its diffusion, but as the consumption of wealth grows to be extravagant and wasteful, misery and want result to the mass of the people, and population may receive a consequent check. But the causes are palpably to be found in the vices of sensuality, luxury, display, pride, and ambition, of man, which impel him to an unproductive consumption of wealth, and a non-production of labour. Hence, will arise two opposite parties, in respect to population, the idle, the rich, and the non-producing capitalist, contending that population is redundant, and insisting that the producer of labour ought to abstain from matrimony, and offspring, in order to allow to them a greater consumption of luxury,—whilst the industrious, the philanthropic, and the virtuous would contend, that as he who produced wealth, or acquired it by the force of talent, genius, and industry, ought to enjoy it, society was bound to make her laws conform to the principles of natural justice, and enable the working classes to maintain and educate their offspring, from that portion of the stock of labour, which of right belongs to them, and which is now wasted upon luxury, pomp, and extravagance. That therefore the present right to property, is identical with the divine right to power, that the human right to property is the skill, talent, and industry to produce, and acquire

it, as the human right to power is the suffrage, voice and happiness of the majority, or of all mankind.

NATURE has written upon every heart, in characters too legible to be misunderstood, the word "INDUSTRY." She has made its fruit sweet, and its toil wholesome, its reward independence and felicity. But power has perverted her decrees: in place of industry, she has inscribed "SLAVERY," has made its fruit bitter, its toil poisonous, its reward dependence, misery, and vice. Nature, omnipotent in her instincts, cries aloud to displace POWER, and substitute RIGHT, to abolish " SLAVERY," and reinstate competence, happiness, and virtue, in their just possessions.. The age, and the country we live in, declare the time propitious, and the reform inevitable.