Daily American telegraph., 1852-05-03
AMERICAN TELEGRAPH.
MeIthus and carey.

.#
! Republieanism is the true religion of politics;
its creed is Faith, Hope, and Charity, and its
aim is Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, for
all men; its message is " good tidings of great
joy which shall be to all people" its mission
is " Glory to God in the highest, and on earth
peace, good will towards men" But not every
one has this faith and hope in him and 50 the
charity, which should never fail, yields to the
doubt and despair of false facts and erroneous
theories.
An opinion prevails that population increases
faster than subsistence by the laws of nature,
allowed their free play; and that poverty, with
all its incapacities and its debasement, its mis-
cry and destruction, is inevitable. 1t is held
by the authorities in vogue, and the notion is
generally accepted from them, that improve
mentsl in cultivation, while they increase pro-
duction, are necessarily followed by still more
rapid increase of population, neutralizng their
effect by compelling a resort to less productive
soils : and that the remedies provided by ma
ture are war, pestilence, famine, and the waste
of life which vice and misery everywhere oc-
casions. 1t is supposed that the human race
multiplies So rapidly, that if the natural term
of life were generally reached, within period
quite near enough to affect our philanthropic
fears, there would not be left even standing
room on the face Of the earth for its human
inhabitants, and that therefore the mischief
prevailing in the present system of things Is
but the inevitable catastrophe distributed, as we
may say, in advance over the process, and
taken by instalments to prevent the final fail
,lre and utter extinction of the whole race in
one great and consummate ruin. In other
words, that Providence checks the tendency to
final explosion of his scheme of human life
by constant waste of that power and product
which its regular laws generate. The earth $
expressions, therefore, if they are the policy of
it's despots, are in this view defensible for it is
conspiracy with Heaven to maintain in its
safest movement the necessary order Of human
things This supposed counter-working of the
laws of human life and the drift of the mate
rial things on which that life depends, is net
only accepted as the speculative end and pos
sibility of the earth's economy, but it is appre-
hended as actually and presently in force, and
pressing upon the policy of civil government
and social life. Even religion accommodates
it with place and allowance in its theory,
saving the honor of the Creator, or endeavoring
to do SO, and compensating the victims of the
system, by that far more exceeding and eter-
nal weight of glory !" which shall restore the
equities of the divine administration,
Actual observation and the records of expe-
rience seem also to prove the same doctrine
Nations have arisen, fourished, and decayed,
as by regular necessity. The story of the
race is punctuated as with tombstones, and
kindreds and peoples rot away of their own
ripeness like summer fruits, to relieve the stem
that bears them, and make room for the sue
ceeding crop. The great Northern hive " at
the beginning Of the Christian era must
swarm, and, settling upon Southern Europe,
destroyed its civilization, already sinking into
dotage The excessive life Of the one playing
executioner to the exhausted powers of the
other, the tribes of North and South Asia
have been wandering like herds of wolves in
search of prey, under a necessity of emigra-
ton, as long as their history is known; and
England and France, since the discovery OF
America and the conquest of India, Australia,
and Africa, have pursued the policy of coloni-
cation in search Of more abundant wealth, or
relief of their redundant populations. And now,
under the pressure of evils felt all over Europe,
the people arc crowding from the long-cultiya-
ted fields Of the Old World to the wilderness
of the New The half of Ireland is in America
already, and Germany comes by towns and
provinces, and settles down among us in
patches, which it covers like the pieces of a
dissected map pasted upon an atlas
All this is received as a result of first princi-
pies in the order of the earth's economy. Phi
losophers and statesmen talk Of our abundance
and fertility Of land as the source of our pros
perity, and the reason of our capacity for more
human life and labor, and calculate with some
complaisance that population will not reach
the limit of productiveuess here until, say the
year twenty two hundred, or as long hence as
the time since the discovery Of the continent,
when the era of universal starvation, unmitl-
gated by colonization, may DO expected to be-
gin, without hope of remission or recovery for
ever
This gloomy notion is liable to the objection
that it makes nature laws and movements
clash most horribly in their very highest
sphere--up in the region of lifewhero the ends
of earth meet and ought to harmonlze, If any
where. Among the inferior animals the car
niverous propensity checks the redundancy Of
life, without poisoning all its fountains Of en-