The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1852-04-29
MALTHUs AND CAREY.


all men it's message is good tidings OF great
;ov which shall be to all people," its mission
i Glory to God in the highest, and on earth
neace good will towards men," But not every
one has this faith and hope in him; and so 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-
ery and destruction, is inevitable. IL Is heid
by the authorities in vogue, and the notion iS
generally accepted from them, that improve
ments in cultivation, while they increase pro-
ducton are necessarily followed by still more
rapid increase of population, neutrallzlng their
effect by compelling 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
multiples so rapidly, that if the natural term
Of life we're generally reached, within a period
ouite near enough to affect our philanthroplc
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
NAV saw in advance over the process, and
taken by instalments to prevent the hhai ian-
.l,ln
ure and utter extinction of the whole race In
one great and consummate rum. In other
words that Providence checks the tendency 10
q 6ral explosion of his scheme OF human lie
NV a constant waste of that power and product
which its regular laws generate. The earth S
onnressions. therefore if they are the policy OF
its despots, are in this view deiensble; tor 1t Is
q consniracy with Heaven to maintain In Its
safest movement the necessary order OF human
things. This supposed counter-workng OF the
laws of human life and the drift Of the mate
rial things on which that life depends, is not
only accepted as the speculative end and pos
sbility 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-
rence seem also to prove the same doctrine :;
Nations have arisen, flourished, 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
rpeness, like summer fruits, to relieve the stem
that bears Them and make room for the sue
ceedng 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
zaton in search of more abundant wealth, OIL
relief of their redundant populations. And now
under the pressure of evils felt all over Europe
the people are crowding from the long-cultiva'
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
iosophers 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 productiveness here, until, say the
year twenty-five hundred, or as long hence as
the time since the discovery of the continent
when the era Of universal starvation, unmiti'
gated by colonization, may be expected to be-
GIN, without hope of remission or recovery for
ever.
This gloomy notion is liable to the objection
that it makes natures laws and movements
clash most horribly in their very highest
sphere-up in the region of life where the ends
of earth meet and ought to harmonic, if any
where. Among the inferior animals the car
nverous propensity checks the redundancy Of
life, without poisoning all its fountains of en-.
iOyment. They escape disease, and meet a
briefer and even easier death: while the bal
ance between human life and food is kept by
suicide and homicide, by misery and murder
1t this dismal apprehension that We are statinl
be the truth. 1t is probably untrue; and there
Is better moral in creation and the prospec
of better things in the future of the world
life
The systematic statement of this doctrine is
that population tends to increase at the rate O
doubling itself every twenty-five years; Will
food, under the best possible circumstances
and with the aid Of all improvements in cult
walton, cannot increase faster than double 70
the hrst quarter Of a century, triple for the sec
ond1 quadrupe for the third, and 80 on-th
former growing by multiplication, the latter b,
addition only, as the geometrical to the arith
met'cal ratio-in figures, human life as /, 2, 4
9, 10, 80, 81, 1913, at the successive quarter
Oh two centuries but food only as /, 2, 8, 4, s
81 8, in the same time. In this calculatio,
MIR. Nautilus is supported, at least in the de,
and principle of it, by host of the book
makers and theorists Of the science of Politica
Economy Ricardo who is at the head of thu