The Sun.
London, England, 1841-11-11 00:00:00

If MALTHUS and some of his followers be rip,:ht,
the renowned MARCUS, with his plan of painless
extinction, will not be far wrong.
The great question to be decided is, whether
successive inventions and improvements conse-
quent on an increase of population, balance, or
are inferior to the difficulty of procuring sub-
sistence caused by that increase ? We must
take a long view, and compare man in his earliest
known stage of existence with man in his pre-
sent condition, to arrive at a just conclusion.
Every society hitherto known can be traced
back to barbarism. It was rude and half savage
when its history began, and prior to that its tra-
ditionary accounts represent it as isolated fami-
lies of savages. Although there be suffering
and destitution among some classes at every
period, the worst provided member of civilised
society is no worse off than were the naked and
savage progenitors of mankind. The savage
has, and always had, great difficulty to subsist
himself and his family, though the woman la-
boured as much as the man. Something
more than barely support themselves they were
able to effect, or society could not have in-
creased; but it was very little, and in the earliest
known periods of history society increased very
slowly. At present the labour of civilised man
sustains a great many more persons than the
labourers. The great and the increasing number
of opulent idlers who are maintained in every ci-
vilised society is an unanswerable proof that inven-
tions and improvements have overmastered the
difficulty of procuring subsistence, caused by the
increase of population, and that as people have
multiplied on the earth, so subsistence has be-
come more abundant.

The United States, and our colonies of New
Holland and New Zealand, afford a striking
illustration of this progress. Over these vast coun-
tries only a few savages roamed a few centuries
ago, and had the greatest difficulty in procuring
subsistence; at present they are comparatively
crowded with civilised men, and millions live in
opulence and ease, where only a few naked
savages roamed. Science and art enable man,
as the race multiplies, to overcome that difficulty
which Mr. MALTHUS mistakingly described as
insuperable, and each labourer in a civilised com-
munity produces much more than enough for
himself and to perpetuate his race.
We arrive at this conclusion, by comparing the
earliest known condition of society with its pre-
sent condition; but, in all the intermediate
stages, there have been continual oscillations.
Society has not steadily advanced from destitu-
tion to abundance ; but sometimes destitution,
and sometimes abundance, has got the upper
hand. Great discoveries or great inventions,
or the application of old knowledge to new lands,
combined with seasons of tranquillity, have, at
particular periods, sprcad wealth and prosperity
through a community ; and then again have
come periods when there was no opening for
enterprise—when all places and employments
were crowded with applicants—when the com-
munity lived fully up to its resources, and dis-
comfort, poverty, and decay, took the place of
opulence and prosperity. These oscillations,
however, have not, in the long run, altered the
general rule, which has been, on the whole, to
advance from comparative destitution to compa-
rative plenty ; though at every period the pres-
sure on the means of subsistence has been felt,
and has been the stimulus to every improve-
ment.

It is, however, on the whole, clear—from the
many conveniences and luxuries enjoyed by
civilised man, from the leisure of some and the
idleness of others, from the number of persons
who can devote themselves to unproductive oc-
cupations or amusements, who are multiplying
every year—that as society advances, the power
of labour becomes more productive, and the re-
wards of labour ought to be greater. Why are
they:not ? Why do the wages of agricultural
labour continue always about the same, namely,
just enough to keep the labourers in existence ?
And why do not the wages of artisans rise as
their skill increases ? This is the real question
for the labourers to consider, before they ex-
press dissatisfaction with machinery. As the
difficulty of procuring subsistence diminishes as
society advances, how is it that the labouring
classes, who produce all the wealth of the world,
have so very small a share ?
The answer to this question is to be found in
another fact. The land was all violently appro-
priated at an early period; those who appropria-
ted it made slaves of the labourers; and all their
political contrivances, ever since, have been in-
tended to keep the working classes in slavery.
The labourers of Europe have sprung from an en-
slaved class, and they have only bettered their
condition as they have escaped from bondage,
by engaging in new arts, not under the control
of the landowner. At present the recently eman-
cipated slaves in the West Indies, according to
the statements of various writers, get good
wages, because their numbers are comparatively
few, and their former masters are not exclu-
sively their law-makers. The statutes to keep
down the wages of labour, cannot be
passed year after year, and c entury after cen-
tury, as they were passed in England as the
serfs were gradually emancipated, and so wages
are high ; but the European labourers may get a
correct notion of the mode in which the rate of
wages was gradually settled in Europe, by look-
ing to the state of society in the West Indies.
Let them suppose the masters of the emanci-
pated slaves endowed with an exclusive privilege
of making laws, and possessing the whole land
of the colonies. If the negro race multiplies, as
human beings always do when food is plentiful,
they must soon be at the mercy of their masters.
They will bid against one another for food, the
means of obtaining which is all in the hands of
law-makers whom they are accustomed to re-
spect and obey, and under the pressure of that
necessity they will gladly accept in return for
their labour the smallest quantity of subsistence
on which they can sustain life. Thus it is not
merely the pressure of population on subsistence
which keeps down wages to the point at which
the supply of labour required by landlords and
capitalists can be reared, but that pressure, com-
bined with an early and forcible appropriation of
the land by those who make the laws, and who
always study their own interest and advantage.
These are the general principles which deter-
mine the rate of wages. On the whole, the ap-
propriation of land, and the laws for maintaining
the power of the landowners, remain nearly the
same, but the pressure of population on subsist-
ence continually varies as the seasons are abun-
dant or otherwise, and as the population comes
up to or falls below the supply of food. In the
main, therefore; it is the difficulty, more or less,
of procuring subsistence at any given moment,
which determines the amount of wages. It is
clear if the landlords could not limit the supply
of the means of subsistence, the ancient appro-
priation of the land and their power of making
laws would no more avail them to keep the la-
bourer poor and dependent, than the power of
the landowners of Jamaica would answeri the
same end if their emancipated slaves could all
easily find a new home
the landowners, Domingo. T e
a number of pretexts, great object latterly, therefore,
of
under lnSt.
has been to limit the
supply of the means of subsistence. Corn and pro-
vision laws accordingly forbid free importation ;
there is a palpable scarcity of food • population
de-
labourers are numerous in comparison to the
presses severely on the means of subsistence; the
mand for their services, and to the quantity of
food by which those services are to be paid; and
hence, at this moment, and not because of ma-
chinery—which would enable our people to buy
food from America in cheap abundance—employ-
ment is very scanty, and wages very low. When
the population has been starved down to the
means of supply, which are in the landlords'
hands, when two or three fertile seasons inter-
vene, then again, and not till then—unless the
law which limits the supply be altered—will em-
ployment increase and wages rise.
Having thus, at greater length than we wished,
explained what we consider the causes of low