The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-12-04 00:00:00

AST INDIA COMPANY

HIGHER WAGES WILL BUT INCREASE POPTLATION

Mr. Malthus published the first edition of his work in
1798. Since that period, which has augmented most, po-
pulation, or the means of subsistence ? Which have done
most,—the mouths that have come into the world, in di-
minishing food, or the brains and pairs of hands that
have come with them, in augmenting the means of pro-
ducing it ?
Protectionists tell us, that in the article of food alone,
our means of producing, even within the narrow boun-
dary of the British islands, are yet unlimited. There are
many millions of uncultivated acres, of fertility till lately
unsuspected. The resources of drainage and improved
cultivation are but beginning to be opened up. Agricul-
tural chemistry is in its infancy. The elements of ferti-
lity have but just begun to be scientifically understood.
They point to your colonies in both hemispheres, where
the precious grain of the Anglo-Saxon race is sown and
germinating, There you have, not petty territories, like
France or Spain, but vast continents preparing to receive
your productions, to pour back in return their food and
other natural riches ; and if need be, to receive more peo-
ple than you can send. They add that steam has, since
the days of Malthus, laid your colonies, with their bound-
less fields, alongside your coasts.
The free-traders, on their part, bid you look to the val-
ley of the Mississippi, able to supply all Europe with food.
They tell you that you could, and ought, to draw your
supplies from that and many other inexhaustible foreign
sources.

But both protectionists and free-traders agree in this,
that, since the days of Malthus, however the population
may have augmented, the means of producing and acquir-
ing food have been augmented, not only in an equal, but
in an infinitely increased ratio.

Now look at all other material things besides food.
The difficulty is not to produce, but the difficulty seems
now to be, not to over produce. Steam, and mechanical
powers, with chemical agencies, have laid the riches of all
nature at our feet in inexhaustible profusion.

The means of subsistence have therefore not been
wanting to population. There was, in 1798, no real dan-
ger of too great an increase of men and women. Provi-
dence had gifts in store, not suspected by those who dis-
trusted it 3 prescience and bounty!`
But how often has population -been wanting to the
means of subsistence! Where are the dense populations
that anciently lined the banks of the Nile,. the Indus, and
the Euphrates ? The fertile land remains in Asia Minor,
Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Persia, and Northern India, but the
huge cities and the myriads of human creatures with
which, under their ancient monarchies, they once
swarmed, are gone.
In fact it has been truly observed by Paley and by M.
Thiers, that there never yet has been a nation which even
fully cultivated its own soil; and if we are to judge of the
future by the past, there never will be.
But the second position, that the rate of wages governs
the rate of increase, and that the increase of a population
is therefore in proportion to its comfortable circumstances,
is quite as irreconcileable with established facts.
Comfort and a station in life, we find beget prudence.
Poverty produces recklessness. The middle and upper
classes do not breed like the lowest. Few populations
multiply like the most wretched Irish.
There is nothing therefore in a true theory of population
to scare either governments or benevolent individuals
from persevering endeavours to better the condition, and
raise the remuneration of the lowest class. On the con-
trary, there is every thing to encourage such philanthro-
pical endeavours. It is the truest, soundest
In the wynds of Glasgow and cellars of Liverpool, popu-
lation multiplies as fast as any where else. And what a

* Sophisms of Free Trade and Popular Political Economy
Examined. By a Barrister. Seeleys, Fleet-street and Hano-
ver-street. _

t It is not pretended that Adam Smith is everywhere consis-
tent with himself on this subject. He certainly is not. For
this admission alone destroys the theory of free-trade. Mr.
Horner himself, speaking of Smith, calls him a loose writer.
Mr. M'Culloch has here fallen into a transparent sophism.
He says in his " Principles of Political Economy," (p. 151) that
tke displaced artificers would be employed in the production of
the articles that must be sent as equivalents to the foreigner.
But that is not so. It is the Leicester stocking-makers who
are employed in producing the equivalents—but they were em-
ployed before.
§ Political causes have, at present, prevented this. English
absentees and foreigners have, through foreign disturbances,
been driven to this country by thousands, mut their property
by millions.