Persons to each mile. 118 (including) Government of Astrakhan, of Orenburgh, These tables, published under sanction of the Russian Government, are, past doubt, substantially correct. The contrasts they present are surely extraordinary; and what is there in the theory of Malthus to account for these discrepancies, unless vice, misery, and moral restraint can be shown to exist where animal food is to be had nearly gratis, and where population is encouraged both by the owners of the soil, and the government of the country! Such results, one would imagine, might have led M. Malte Brun, and others conversant with such details, to have doubted of the soundness of the notion, that mere populousness was a sign of the prosperity of nations. Theories, however, are spectacles through which men unhappily look at facts, as the following extract from M. Malte Brun's description of France (for to France I now turn) will evince. Thus speaks Malte Brun of Southern France::- "We have had occasion to observe the mild climate, the romantic sites, and the remains of Roman power in the twenty-eight departments that form the southern region of France. The inhabitants, it has been seen, are favoured by nature; the different productions are admirably suited for their country; with the exception of the mountains, the soil is every-where fruitful. But if the population be compared with the surface, it will be found that the result accords ill with the natural advantages of the same vast region which makes up more than a third part of the kingdom. The extent is equal to 9000 square leagues; the population to 8,404,000 individuals; thus the number of inhabitants to every square league does not amount to nine hundred and thirty-four, a result below the mean number in the other divisions of the same country. Such facts are not without their value; (très veritable, M. Malte Brun!) if the best and most fruitful part of France is comparatively poor and illpeopled, it proves how much the munificence of nature may be surpassed by the industry and resources of man. Government, too, may derive an im 5,626 1,333,500 1,043,500 57 310 185 portant lesson from the same fact; it may thus be taught to appreciate the elements of its wealth and power. Thirteen departments make up the western region; the population relatively to the surface is greater than the last, for 5,428,000 inhabitants are scattered over a surface of 4200 square leagues; consequently, the average number to every square league exceeds 1290. Still the advantages of education are little known in the western region; in that point it is almost on a level with the preceding. How much, then, might the population and wealth be increased, if ignorance no longer formed a barrier to the expansion of industry?"-Malte Brun, Geography, vol. viii. p. 273. The Let us analyze this passage, strange and self-contradictory as it is. southern departments of France, it seems, are eminently fruitful. But then the people are only 934 to the square league-much below the mean number of other divisions. Therefore, says he, these districts are comparatively poor and ill-peopled, and places them below the other better peopled regions with 1290 to the square league, admitting, at the same time, that, in point of education and science, they are on a par! He, in the same breath, blames the Government for this disparity. Now, is not this monstrous, my Lord? Here we have a region stigmatized as "poor," because it divides greater natural wealth amongst fewer inhabitants than another region. At the same time, we have this other region held forth as comparatively better, because it has more people, though these people are admitted to have no more scientific skill than their rivals to do away with the effects of the natural sterility of their soil, and augment their means of living comfortably nearer to their numerical extent. How, too, was a Government to help this? If the really poor country-I mean the populous one-were to be helped, Government might do this, either by giving them money and provisions, or enabling them to emigrate. But how is it to help the really rich district? If, in despite of the absence of Mal And yet this is confessedly the poorest and most squalid, the least comfortable and most ragged, of the French departments: so true is it that want and numbers always go on increasing together, and vice versa. Let us now look at India, and we shall find precisely the same results. In the immense territory of Indostan, it is well known that the principal food of the inhabitants is rice. The Braminical religion forbids the use of animal food, and this religion is predominant over the greater portion of this vast region. The consequence of this mode of life is, that the numbers of the people so press upon their means of subsistence, that famines frequently occur, and the population is actually thinned, for a brief space, by death from hunger; soon, however, to be replenished by fresh myriads. 5)7069 M. Malte Brun states the area of Indostan, including both the British and native territories, at one million two hundred and eighty thousand square miles English. This broad expanse is crossed by chains of immense mountains quite uninhabitable, and much of the more level parts of the country is yet forest, swamp, and jungle, the domain of the elephant, the tiger, the buffalo, and the rhino. ceros; and yet the population is estimated as high as one hundred and thirty-four millions of human beings, being, in round numbers, about eleven hundred to the British square league for the whole, which is far beyond that of the most fertile departments of the beautiful country of France, and probably, if the space they in fact occupy could be accurately estimated, far beyond that of any European 1414 Average to the square league. country, not excepting even poor and miserable Ireland, which is the most populous of all. In China, similar causes are known to have produced similar consequences; and frightful scenes of child-murder and childabandonment are believed to be of constant occurrence throughout the Celestial empire. The exact population can only be guessed at, and the guesses are various. Allerstein, in 1743, estimated the Chinese people at one hundred and ninety-eight millions, which Malte Brun reduces to one hundred and fifty millions, but which Macartney, in 1795, made to amount to three hundred and thirty millions. Taking the medium of two hundred millions, the result to the square mile is enormous, the area of China being only one million two hundred and ninety-seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine square miles, or, in round numbers, one hundred and forty-five thousand square leagues— whilst Macartney's estimate would give two thousand seven hundred persons to every square league of this immense empire; which, however, over-peopled as it is known to be, is hardly credible. But what a contrast here with beef-crammed, gross, swinish Russia! It is lamentable to think, my Lord, that next to these Eastern countries, one of the most populous in the world is poor and squalid Ireland. The entire area of Ireland is 31,875 square English miles. The population is now eight millions, at least; but if the rate of increase from 1821 to 1831 be taken, probably nearer eight millions and a-half, or, in round numbers, two thousand five hundred persons to each square league; and this in a country from which much of the wheat, and nearly all the live-stock are exported, and where it is known that, out of twenty million acres, only fourteen millions are cultivated, or in any way productive of food for the inhabitants. In countries where pasturage and tillage are both pursued, and the food of the inhabitants is of average goodness, the population is always moderate. In highly fertile Italy, for instance, there are sixteen millions of persons upon ten thousand French square leagues, which are its area, being 1600 to the league-and the rate of increase is trifling the average of births to a marriage being three only. In the Netherlands, which is beyond question the most fertile and most and best cultivated tract in Europe -where there are no mountains, and hardly an impediment to tillage; in short, where every rood of land is productive, and where pasturage and tillage are equally pursued, we have similar results, a stationary and not immoderate population, living well, and their numbers only in accordance with their food. In this beautiful country, which is like one great garden, there is not one person for each hectare of land (two and a-half acres English), despite the influx of persons thither since the end of the war in 1815, and yet these lands are nearly all in the highest state of productiveness (a population below that of half-cultivated, half-starved Ireland); whilst here, instead of families of a dozen children being seen, the average produce of a marriage is only four children; and the population remains nearly stationary, the proportion of deaths to births being of course very high. The increase of population in the United States has been much harped upon by Mr Malthus and others. Of this I have only to say, that, of all countries, it is the least likely for obtaining true results; the immigration there of persons, fleeing from the wretchedness of Europe, being so great and constant as to baffle calculation. Here, my Lord, I conclude, not from want of matter, but from a fear of tedious repetition. The facts I have adduced, however, are enough for me. I conclude from them the following axioms, as to the truth of which I am confident: 1st, That where a people are amply and sufficiently supplied with solid food, their tendency is upon the whole not to increase. 2d, That in all societies so supplied, the great bulk of the population are stationary as to number, and that any increase at one end amongst the poorest is counteracted by a diminution at the other end amongst the luxurious. 3d, That this law generally pervades nature, inasmuch as the inferior animals, and all vegetable productions, cease to be productive if their food or soil be naturally or artificially too abundant or too rich. 4th, That, on the other hand, if the species be endangered, by want of sufficient sustenance, or by other enfeebling causes, the tendency to increase is immediately augmented, and that this general law pervades the vegetable as well as animal kingdom. 5th, That these laws clearly account for the great differences as to increase of population in different countries, and that no other theory has accounted, nor can account, for these differences. Such, my Lord, are the effects which the foregoing considerations have produced upon my mind. That they should produce a similar impression upon your Lordship's, it would be arrogant in me to hope. If, however, this paper should meet the eye of your Lordship, and have cogency enough to induce you to pause and reconsider this question, or deem it worthy of a reconsideration, I shall be amply repaid by the feeling that I have not, at all events, written in vain. Nor do I altogether despair of this; because I, like your Lordship, was at one time wholly subdued by the at once confident and plausible assertions of Malthus, to which, at that period, I had absolutely nothing to oppose, but which, I am now convinced, are altogether futile, and founded on a total ignorance of physiology and existing facts. With every deference for your Lordship, and a deep respect for your Lordship's great and varied acquirements and talents, I have the honour to remain, Your Lordship's most obedient ON FICTITIOUS VOTES. WE delight in fiction; for though perhaps not so wonderful as truth, it is just as instructive, and far more agreeable. But we detest "Fictitious Votes ;" and still more do we detest the senseless jargon which we have lately heard about them. There are, however, some considerations which at present almost force the subject upon us; and we hope, therefore, that our readers will bear with us, while, in a very few words, we endeavour to put it in its just light. The clamour, then, which has recently been made against these socalled fictitious votes, seem to us not only unreasonable and unmeaning, but of a tendency the most dangerous; tending, we think, to consequences which have probably never been contemplated by many even of those who lend to it the sanction of their names. The causes of it can hardly need to be pointed out to any one who has observed the progress of political events in Scotland (and to Scotland we shall confine our present observations) during these three or four years past; they are to be found in the natural, though probably to many persons the unlooked-for operation of that great charter of our rights and liberties, the Reform Bill. It was the avowed object of the authors of that measure, that the elective franchise should be based on PROPERTY-the only basis, surely, on which any sober-minded man would ever wish to see it rest. Many, no doubt, were our objections to the mode in which this object was carried into effect in the Reform act but let that pass; it is sufficient for our present purpose that it is agreed on all hands, that property does form the foundation of our present political rights. Now it is quite clear, that property has ever been and must ever be Conservative; and it is equally clear, that if political influence has any relation to property at all, it must always in process of time come to bear a tolerably accurate proportion to it. While the country was yet reeling under the shock which its whole social fabric received in the enactment of the Reform Bill, this was perhaps less apparent; but the experience of more recent and tranquil years, and the state of parties at the present moment, must convince every one of the indestructible strength of this all-important principle. Property has in many places resumed, and is every where fast resuming its natural and legitimate influence. Hence the recent triumphs of Conservatism; hence the cheering prospect of a return to peace, order, and good Government; and hence the clamour of the Whigs against what, either with reckless disregard of truth, or in profound ignorance of the subject, they are pleased to term "fictitious votes.' No one who considers the subject for a single moment can doubt that this is the true and only cause of the outcry which has lately been raised by the Whigs on this subject; for in every thing that has been said by them as to fictitious votes, though the meaning is, in many respects, to the last degree obscure and unintelligible, it is yet quite manifest that there is a constant reference to those cases generally in which the elective franchise has been obtained with the avowed object of strengthening the Conservative interest. The plain English of this, of course, just is" we feel that the property of the country is against us; the political power which we have obtained by means of other influences, which are temporary, precarious, and unstable, is thus in a fair way of being wrested from us, and this must be averted just by the old expedient of rendering one portion of the community hateful to another portion of it." It is true that they now find themselves in a position in which they neither know to what portion of the community the language of discord can be addressed, with a due regard to their own safety, nor can venture to explain against what portion of it it is directed: for, on the one hand, they are well aware that the answer to it may be the answer of pure Radicalism; and, on the other hand, they feel that any attempt at explanation must just bring them at once to the ludicrous acknowledgment that they object to all political influence whatever which is not exercised in their own favour. Still, however, this is, and must be, the true meaning of all that has lately been said on this subject of "fictitious votes;" for if this term be |