New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1851-07-23
seem inadequate to rouse the minds OF men
| IN the perception of their falseness.


which the entire philosophy Of The Times IS
based is that population increases more
rapidly than the supply of food which the
earth can be made to yield, and thus there
is perpetual danger of over-population.
This evil, we are here told, has actually
come upon Great Britain. Man has been
a drug and population nuisance.
We pronounce this doctrine entirely err
roneous, false to nature and to the facts Of
experience. Nature knows no such thing as
oyer-populaton either in the present or the
future. The fact is that in the present. the
growth and concentration of popalation-in
every condition approaching freedom where
the genuine natural tendencies are allowed
to manifest themselyes,-are and must be
attended by an ever increasing abundance
of the products OF the soil. Food tends to
increase faster than population, because as
men are concentrated, provided with better
tools. and endowed with more ample scien-
tifc knowledge, they are able to cultivate
the more fertile soils, and to cultivate
them better than when they lived remote
from each other, and each man provided for
himself. his family, and his landlord from
the Weld of comparatively barren and more
easily cultivated land. There is not and
has never been a country where the pOpula-
tion approached the food-producing capacity
of the soil, much less exceeded It. No :;
God has committed no such contradiction as
to create men. and endow them with the
power of reproduction to a degree exceed
ing the ability of the earth, he gave them to
inhabt, to produce food for their subsistence.
The proposition is absurd, if not blasPhe-
nous in its very terms and we wonder how
men calling themselves Christians, not to
say rational beings, could ever admit it.
OF course we do not deny that there have
been and are countries and places where
the many have wanted food and have suf-
fered and persisted by starvation. But we
say that it is not because OF over-populatlon,
or from the result of a natural cause 1t is
because Society has allowed a few who have
not worked to take the food from the many
who have. 1t is because the laws of Ma
ture and of God have there been outraged,
trampled under foot, annulled by the selfish
ness and wickedness of Man. And having
perpetrated this wickedness, having plum
dered. enslaved and starved the masses, de-
priving them first of the land, then of its
produce, and thereby of the sole means of
improving the land and of improving their
own condition, the lords, or instruments of
this wrong, piously reject the blame upon the
Divine Creator, proclalmlng that oyer-popu-
lation is the cause of the evil, and that the
highest duty of Society and of the wealthy
is charity, while the philosophers and lead
ing journals, with equal piety, take up the
story and find that Nature, not man, Is III
fault, Can the most mOnstrOuS of crimes
he decked with more monstrous apology
The Times maintains that further re-
duction of some millions in the population
of the kingdom must greatly increase the
value OF labor. This would be amusing
were the fact that such an assertion could
come from so influential a quarter not so mel
anchoIy. The value of labor depends on the
power of people TO consume the products
OF labor and the consequent demand for
them. Other things being equal, labor must
be more valuable, that is TO say, it must re-
turn to the laborer a greater proportion of
the comforts and Injuries of life, In coun-
try where there is population of twenty
contains only five millions. The reason Is
simple more wealth is created by the more
intimate association of the people and the
better cultivation of richer soils; it is more
equally distributed, because the tendency TO
equality Is constant among men IN this as IN
other respects, and cannot be altogether null
lifted. Thus, there being more wealth
and it being better distributed, the general
demand for the products of labor is IN
creased and extended, and labor consequent
" receives a better return. The only ex-
ceptiOn TO this rule is where the people are
plundered as in Ireland. by foreign landlords
who despoil them of the wealth the land
and their labor together have produced, and
carry 1t out of the country to be squandered
elsewhere.
According to the doctrine of The Times,
the value of labor must have been much
larger in England when population was
thinner. This we deny with all the more