MALTHUS AND HIS WORK.

Not the least striking feature in recent developments of political and social economy which Lord Beaconsfield jocosely used to term "the dismal science"— is the resurrection of Malthus after an interment of two generations. For a time there was a rage for renewed acquaintance with Smith's Wealth of Nations, after a long interval of dormancy, this revival being specially evoked by the exigencies of the free-trade movement in 1846, of which that author, although born eighty years previously, may fairly be accounted the father. The study of Adam Smith by the intellectual youth of forty years ago was pursued almost contemporaneously with the perusal of Senior and Ricardo. Soon afterwards, John Stuart Mill's two volumes on Political Economy were hailed as the clearest and most philosophical exposition of questions relating to rent, wages and land that English literature had produced. Lesser lights on the subject, like Cairnes, Jevons and Beesley, have since flickered on the horizon with more or less feebleness, but no new aspect of economic science has been evolved during the last dozen years, unless we except the views of Henry George in his popular work called Progress and Poverty, in which for the first time he resolves all wealth into labor. These writers of varied eminence are only alluded to here to emphasise the fact that hardly one of them is now read with any degree of enthusiasm, unless it be the one last mentioned, whose scheme of land nationalisation, however, appears as yet a long way from being included in the sphere of practical politics.
It is Malthus that under the existing conditions of society is once more in the ascendant. Nor is this incident difficult to account for. Adam Smith, being the earliest and most luminous exponent of the fiscal system, which for so many years has prevailed in England, has ceased to be a ruling prophet, for the simple reason that free-trade has proved to be a ruinous delusion, and his doctrines are under a cloud, not only with the bulk of English manufacturers and workmen, but with all the great states of Europe and America. The absorbing social problem of the hour is how a more equable distribution of human comfort is to be effected and a higher minimum of happiness attained among the masses of the population. The attempts to solve that question have divided social and economic reformers into two great classes. On the one hand there are the socialists, communists, nihilists and anarchists, the common fundamental postulate of whose theory is that individual property is the curse of mankind, the colossal foe of exalted sentiment and the arch-corrupting influence which converts its possessor into an incarnation of tyranny, caprice, pride and inhumanity. Karl Marx, Hyndman and Morris declare themselves ready to war against this Moloch by dynamite and sword ; their own lives being regarded by them as a trifling consideration in the reckoning. Their ideal of a just and generous distribution of this world's goods consists in a condition of society in which the many work for the welfare of all as members of a common family, according to their respective abilities. They are sanguine enough to believe that a community established on this basis would enjoy an eternal immunity from those periodically glutted markets through overproduction which, like a canker, gnaw at the root of modern civilisation. Nor do they see any risk of too many mouths being created for the food that is available to feed them. These doctrines, so Utopian and impracticable, combined with the reckless imprudence shown by the poor in bringing into the world larger families than they are able to provide for, have prompted the section of theorists who oppose them to search for suitable weapons for that purpose. The Socialists appeal to Owen and Godwin among the departed generation for support to their views, and the party who object to socialistic opinions as antagonistic to legitimate individual freedom invoke the guardian shade of Malthus, whose Essay on Population is now more extensively read than ever it was by thoughtful observers of the transitional stage of social and political life through which we are passing.
In view of the renewed attention now paid to Malthus, with special reference to the population question, Mr. Bonar has rendered able and useful service in his exhaustive and impartial analysis of the entire range of Malthus's principles. The minor writings of the sage are neither few nor unimportant ; but paramount interest at present centres in his magnum opus on population. It may be mentioned for the information of those unacquainted with the circumstances which produced that extraordinary book that we owe it entirely to the publication of the work of William Godwin; which immediately preceded it, entitled Political Justice. The latter author had been a parson, journalist, politician and novelist, and the book just named was the offspring of the French Revolution. The father of Malthus— himself a man of talent and Oxford culture— was favorably inclined to Godwin's opinions. The son, who was then about 30 years of age, in discussing the socialistic views of Godwin with Malthus senior, played devil's advocate, partly from conviction and partly for the sake of argument. But the attack of the son on the views of his father's favorite author, which was begun in a light and recreative spirit, quickly ripened in the mind of Malthus junior, to seriousness. The more he thought, read and talked on the subject he found the case against Godwin's socialism to be stronger than he had at first imagined. The ipsissima verba of Malthus in his preface to the first edition of the Essay, published in 1798, best express his feelings on the occasion:— "The discussion started the general question of the future improvement of society, and the author at first sat down with an intention of merely stating his thoughts to his friend upon paper in a clearer manner than he could do in conversation. But the subject grew into commanding proportions and he was impelled to publish." The result was that for a time he was what Lord Palmerston subsequently claimed to be— "the best abused man of his age." The arguments of Malthus against the apostle of optimism may be condensed in the following words, although they are not those of Malthus:— " If I am told that man will become a winged creature like the ostrich, I should not doubt that he would find wings very useful, but I could hardly believe your prophecy without some kind of proof beyond the mere praises of flying, I should ask what palpable signs there are in his body and habits that such a change was going on, that his neck has been lengthening, his lips hardening and his hair becoming feathery. In the same way, when I am told that man is becoming a finely intellectual being, content with plain living and high thinking, I think I see there might be advantage in the change, but I ask for proofs that it is in progress. I see none ; but, on the contrary, I see strong reasons for believing in its impossibility. Grant me two postulates, and I will disprove that a Millenium can be hoped for. The first is that food is necessary ; the second that the instinct for marriage in human beings is permanent. No one denies the first postulate, and Godwin's denial of the second is purely dogmatic. He speaks of a society where the members are all equally comfortable and at leisure. Suppose such a state of things to be established it could not last ; it would go to pieces through the principle of population alone. The seven years of plenty would be devoured by the seven years of want. The proof of this is short and decisive. Population when unchecked increases in a geometrical and subsistence in an arithmetical ratio." In old countries population is never allowed to multiply unchecked. It is retarded by want of room and food. Vice and misery also tend to keep the numbers and food of an entire community at a level. In a new and fertile country, on the other hand, therefore fewer hindrances to early marriage, since the scope for settlement is wider and food more plentiful. But men there may be killed off with hard work, and their families if they are left behind, must suffer in consequence. If the people of Europe double their numbers in a century and the people of America once in 25 years, the ideal paradise of Godwin, Malthus maintains, must soon disappear, for the old scramble for bread and property must sooner or later be enacted in the new territory as it was in the old, with all the inequalities of rank and property which inevitably accompany it.
In view of this tendency of population to grow out of proportion to the supply of food, Malthus left his readers to infer that instead of the production of large families being in all cases an act of pure virtue, it became morally wrong when it appeared improbable that the parents could adequately support the number of children, they brought into the world. This deduction was made by its author not merely to satisfy the logical requirements of a system, but as the outcome of his philanthropic feeling. It must be added, however, that in the first edition of his essay, not a few of his conclusions were both hasty and baldly expressed. By the majority who had not read it, or had failed to seize his dominant idea, he was deemed almost as great an enemy of his species as Bonaparte himself. Here is a man, cried the populace, under a gross misapprehension, who defends smallpox, slavery and child murder; who protests against soup kitchens, early marriages and parish allowances; and "who had the impudence to marry after preaching against the evils of a family." Nevertheless for thirty years Malthus was revered among the deepest thinkers as an economic seer in the land, although during the whole of that period attempted refutations of his theory rained upon him from all quarters. In his own life time, the Essay on Population passed through six editions. The interval between 1798, when the first edition was published, and 1803, when the second was called for, no less than a score of "replies" appeared. As the name of Darwin has become associated with Darwinism, the name of Malthus is embodied in Malthusianism, a system; which is at the present moment largely promoted by active organisations in Europe and the United States, It is still a popular error that a Malthusian forbids marriage. But in reality the modern follower of the great economist maintains that. However abundant food may be, marriage will soon make the people equally abundant. "It is a question of simple division that a fortune that is wealth for one, will not give comfort to ten or bare life to twenty."
There had been Cassandras before Malthus. Bruckner of Norwich and Dr. Robert Wallace had foreseen that a State based on community of goods, must impart so powerful a stimulus to population, that in the absence of prudent checks upon increase it must eventually come to grief owing to its numbers outrunning food supplies. But it was reserved for Malthus to show the utter hopelessness of Socialism in practice, and he left the theory without a leg to stand on. Similarly, the fallacy that the prosperity of a country is to he judged by its birth rate is silenced by the arguments of our reverend mentor. It cannot he doubted that the people of Great Britain and Germany have multiplied, from natural causes, in a ratio greater than that of other civilised nations. Yet had all the safety valves of emigration been closed both would have presented spectacles of distress for lack of the means of subsistence unsurpassed outside the famine stricken districts of India and China. The French evidently do not believe in the population test of collective happiness, the result being that they make a point of squaring the numbers of their families with their prospects of maintaining them, even at the risk of the rate of increase seriously diminishing. It would seem also that the birth rate of Great Britain since 1877 shows a downward tendency, and that the poor, as well as the rich in that country, are being inoculated with Malthusian tenets. In no part of the world is there a larger proportion of well-to-do spinsters without reasonable prospects of marriage than in Belgravia, inhabited by the London devotees of rank and fashion, and there exists unmistakable evidence that in the factory districts of Staffordshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire the poor also are acting more and more on Malthusian principles.
It is a curious feature in these days of dwindling trade and bread riots, that the population question does not appear to receive so much critical attention from statesmen, as from the people and their non-political economic guides. It was different in the times of Malthus. Pitt and Copleston openly declared themselves on his side, and his reasonings won over Brougham, Mackintosh, Franklin and Whitebread among politicians, Hallam among historians, and James Mill, Senior and Ricardo among economists, and Dr. Price among philosophers. His chief opponents were Hazlett, Coleridge and Southey, whose opinions were tinged with blind sentimentalism and not based on solid argument. Malthus presents a rare instance of a clergyman who never betrayed his profession in his treatment of economic subjects. So far as his writings are concerned, they are perfectly innocent of all allusion to theology, and many who have been interested in him as an economist hardly suspect that he was a clergyman.

*Malthus and His Work, by James Bonar, M.J. London: MacMillan and Co., 1885.

THE DISASTER OF THE POOR LAWS.

The Poor Law of England has proved the source of wide-spread social disaster. In every century since HENRY VIII.'s reign attempts have been made to amend it, and society has been burdened with the evils it has accumulated. The British Government at the present time are discussing the provisions of a new measure affecting the poor of the metropolis, who, year by year, are hanging with a heavier weight upon the wheels of industry. Every year tho existing law breaks down under the increasing burden it attracts to itself, and is the occasion of fresh legislation and additional outlay. Nor can this be wondered at. The principles on which it is founded were designed in profound ignorance, or culpable disregard of those which the providence of GOD has ordained for the basis and cement of the social fabric. It is difficult to understand why the 43rd of ELIZABETH should have been so much extolled, except that it may be regarded as a humanitarian reaction from what have been termed the "bloody Acts" which her father was obliged, according to FROUDE, to enact for the repression of vagabonds and hordes of peripatetic sowers of seditious seed. Although HENRY'S remedy for a thriftless, lazy population is altogether too sharp for our day, it seems better adapted to foster the self reliance of the people under his government than the legislation which followed it. The Poor Law of subsequent Governments has so officiously cared for the poor man that, in localities where the system has deeply rooted itself, he has ceased to care for himself. "He stands," as a celebrated political economist has said, "released from the office of being his own protector, or the protector of his own house." Pauperism has not emancipated him from distress, but from duty. The ties of relationship are ruptured, and the best arrangements of nature and Providence for the moral discipline of society are frustrated. Not only do parents and children mutually abandon each other, but "between the higher and lower classes of the land lies a great chasm, across which the two parties look at each other with all the fierceness and suspicion of natural enemies." This is not by any means a pleasant state of things, or one upon which a statesman can be supposed to look with satisfaction. "The poor," by Divine ordinance we are told, " we shall have always among us;" but it does not follow that we must set up such modes of relief as will deprave those whom we relieve. Dr CHALMERS was not far wrong when he said, "Had there never been any charity by law in England, charity by love would both have had less to do and done her office with greater alacrity. The law has both augmented human want and it has enfeebled human sympathy "

This opinion was not the result of mere theorem on the subject, but of extensive experience drawn from a practical acquaintance with the relief of the poor under two systems ; one devised by himself, wherein the indigent were judiciously relieved without imperilling the mainspring of manhood—self reliance ; the other system, wherein that mainspring was tampered with, although, at that time not so much as it was by the English system. The public charity of Scotland was less pernicious than that of England, just in proportion as it deviated less from nature. He had, as he states, "breathed in both elements," in that of a parish where legal charity was enforced, and in that of a parish where it was not. He had gauged the dimensions of Scottish pauperism before the English system was adopted, and after it was adopted ; and his observations of the result led him to denounce the latter as a system tending to manufacture and to perpetuate the evil it was supposed to cure.

These remarks are intended to bear upon the tendency discovered in this colony to throw the burden of relieving the necessitous population upon the Government. On consulting the reports published by the various benevolent institutions, we find general complaints of a disposition on the part of individuals to shirk their responsibility, and such evidence of the fact as will render the compulsory system with all its attendant evils a necessity. . . .

There are some examples of what damage may be done to the morals of a people by the collection of a large fund specifically for the relief of indigence. The glare of this gilded vision blinds thousands of people to the virtues of personal industry. They are diverted from purposes of honest independence ; and, assuming the spirit and dress of paupers, bequeath both, together with the poison they imply, to their posterity. So, year by year, the industrious are taxed to satisfy the insatiable greed of a depraved community, who, with the license of custom, demand as a right what should be conferred as an alms. The suburb parish of Glasgow, known as the Barony, contained in 1810 a manufacturing population of 50,000. Previous to that date, when no compulsory assessment of property existed for the support of the poor, the expenditure seldom exceeded £600 annually. During the seven years which succeeded 1810, when the compulsory system was introduced, the expenditure increased to £3000. As the Scottish system has approximated to that of England, the demand for relief has not only equalled, but far exceeded, that of England. It is instructive to contrast the 7d. per head on the entire population of a large parish entrusted to Dr. CHALMERS for experimental purposes, which represented the expenditure incurred in the relief of distress, with the 5s. 1½d. per head, on the three millions of Scotland, now required to aliment the indigent.

The case of England is somewhat peculiar. The annual payment of about 1s. 6d. per head on the entire population for the same purpose is there regarded by some persons—though not by men accustomed to think lucidly upon political subjects—as a backhanded compensation to the poor man for having been disinherited of his share in the land of the country. Be that as it may, in this newly-settled colony no such reason can exist. Here, where an effective desire for accumulation co-exists with a boundless extent of unoccupied land, and the growth of capital easily keeps pace with the utmost possible increase of population, there can be little need of any provision for indigence beyond that which private charity is able to provide. The subjects of mental and bodily diseases may safely be left to the provisions of legal charity, which will not add to their number; but unless it is thought desirable to fix pauperism by hereditary settlement in Australian families, we shall afford no sanction to a legal claim to relief by the establishment of a full-blown Poor Law system ; but shall, by means of present organisations, possibly somewhat modified, continue to relieve distress, carefully discriminating between indigence associated with crime and that arising from no criminal causes, while ever mindful to support, but in no way to disturb, the delicate machinery of that law which binds parent to child, and child to parent, and friend to friend, in the bonds of mutual helpfulness.

Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), Wednesday 8 May 1867, page 4

THE LAND MOVEMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN.— No IV.

ITS ORIGIN.

[By RUFUS.]

We have already incidentally referred to the effects produced by the land system in Ireland within the past few years as having exercised an immediate and powerful influence in starting of present land movement in Great Britain. Previous to the passing of the last Irish Land Act the land system in Ireland differed in no essential respect from the land system of the sister kingdoms, or, indeed, from the land system that now prevails throughout the civilized world. But Ireland is far more largely dependent on agriculture than either England or Scotland, and, consequently, it is there that the results of any deficiencies in the land system common to the three countries would naturally first manifest themselves, and assume the most decided character and the hugest proportions. A periodical succession of famines, and a still more frequent recurrence of threats of famine, accompanied and followed by appeals for aid to avert the starvation to death of thousands of her inhabitants, or at least to mitigate their sufferings, the emigration of millions from her shores, the extreme poverty of the peasantry, and the low rate of wages constantly prevailing there are regarded as the chronic condition of Ireland ; and, what ever may be the causes to which we ascribe these evils, there can be no doubt that they fully explain the disaffection that rankles in the bosoms of the great mass of the Irish people at home and abroad, although they may not justify that disaffection, and, far less, the plots, outrages, and crimes in which it spasmodically expresses itself. The problem presented by Ireland has hitherto defied all the efforts for its solution that have been put forth alike by English statesmen and Irish patriots or agitators ; and, in our opinion, both have been equally wrong in the diagnosis they have made of the disease that afflicts her, and in. their notions regarding the sources and causes of that disease, and of the remedy that would effect its cure. Among Englishmen the most widely accepted idea is that Ireland is suffering, and has long been suffering, from over-population; but many also think, or say, that no small share of her afflictions is due to the inherent viciousness of the Irish people. Blood-letting is the favourite, and even the sole, prescription that these large sections of English society recommend ; and they only differ as to the mode in which the operation should be performed, the Malthusians thinking that emigration and the application of prudential checks on the propagation of the race would be sufficient, and the others, for whom we cannot find an appropriate name that would be entirely respectful, recommending, in their feeble fury, a ten minutes' submersion of the Emerald Isle in the Atlantic Ocean. With all this, however, for the present we have little to do. Let it suffice, as an answer to both, that there never has been a food famine in Ireland. During '46, '47, and '48, when the effects of the potato blight were severest, and thousands succumbed to starvation, there were fifteen million pounds sterling of grain, cattle, butter, and cheese exported yearly from the island, the carts that drove the food away passing roads lined with the famishing, and ditches into which the dead bodies of the victims of famine and famine-fever were piled. Between 1840 and 1845 Ireland contained over 8,000,000 of people, although the vast majority of them only managed to exist with potatoes as their staple food, and then she was a food-exporting country. A century and a quarter previously, when the population only numbered two millions, the destitution was so great and so widespread that Dean Swift, with savage irony, gravely proposed to relieve the surplus of population by cultivating a taste for roasted babies, and sacrificing 100,000 Irish infants yearly in the shambles, as dainty food for the rich ! Now, with all the penury and disaffection that prevail among her five to six millions of inhabitants, she is a food-exporting country ; but so far as the population are concerned, the food exported had as well, or, perhaps, better, never have been produced.
 Passing from this aspect of the situation, of which we can only take a necessarily hurried glance, we come next to notice that the farmers and cottiers through out large parts of the island were heavily in arrears with their rent, and that many of them in consequence were ejected. The bad harvests that produced these phenomena in Ireland have produced phenomena similar in kind, however much they may vary in degree, and in the forms they assume, whenever a similar land system is in operation. What was brought into prominence by Irish distress and forced into discussion by Irish agitation was, to quote Mr. Henry George's pamphlet on "The Irish Land Question," "nothing less than that question of transcendent importance which is everywhere beginning to agitate, and, if not settled, must soon convulse the civilized world— the question whether, their political equality conceded (for where this has not already been, it soon will be), the masses of mankind are to remain hewers of wood and drawers of water for the benefit of a fortunate few? whether, having escaped from feudalism, modern society is to pass into an industrial organization more grinding and oppressive, more heartless and hopeless, than feudalism? whether, amid the abundance that labour creates, the producers of wealth are to be content in good times with the barest of livings, and in bad times to suffer and to starve. What is involved in this Irish land question is not a mere local matter between Irish landlords and Irish tenants, but the great social problem of modern civilization. What is arraigned in the arraignment of the claims of Irish landlords is nothing less than the widespread institution of private property in land. In the assertion of the natural rights of the Irish people is the assertion of the natural rights that, by virtue of his existence, pertain everywhere to man." Mr. George adds— " It is probable that the Irish agitators did not at first perceive the real bearing and importance of the question they took in hand;" and it is not only probable but certain that they did not do so, and equally certain that only Mr. Michael Davitt among them (if he can still be classed along with his former colleagues) does so now.
 Only a few words need be said to establish the truth of the assertion that the bad harvests, which also affected Britain, produced similar effects there to what they did in Ireland. There was no famine nor threat of famine, and no call for charity ; but there was that enormous mass of pauperism which has burdened England from the time when the people were first alienated from their native soil, and has gone on cumulating as the institution of private property in land has developed, and the permanent destitution that has long prevailed in town and country alike was greatly intensified. Grain and meat being freely imported from America and Australia, the prices of farm produce could not be raised to such a height as would have enabled the farmers to pay the rent to which their farms had risen under the operation of "free contract" and commercial competition ; and, accordingly, many of them found their way out of the difficulties into which they had been brought by passing through the Insolvency Courts, and many more got reductions of their rents for years in succession, varying from 10 to 50 per cent, from landlords who either recognised that they could not possibly exact all their tenants had bound themselves to pay, or who retained some remains of the sentiment which under another system had united them in closer and more friendly relations with their tenantry. The reduction in the revenue of the landlord was in many cases a very serious matter for him, for let it be remembered that the vast majority of English landlords (so called) have only a life-interest in their estates, and these estates are often heavily burdened with settlements, mortgages, &c, so that any decline in the rents derived from them has to be borne by the landlords, and in many cases a considerable decline means the loss of the entire fraction that under favourable circumstances would find its way into their pockets. "Much of the land of England — a far greater proportion of it than is generally believed," says Mr. Caird in his "Agricultural Survey," " is in the possession of tenants for life, so heavily burdened with settlement encumbrances that they have not the means of improving the land which they are obliged to hold." Nearly the whole of the land of Britain at the present moment is, in fact, under the control of the "dead hand," and many landlords, of whom Lord Carrington may be cited as an example, are desirous of abolishing primogeniture and entail, so that " life interests" may be got rid of and "real ownership" substituted for them. In short, from landlords, tenants, farm labourers, and an ever-increasing proportion of the public at large complaints are hurled against the existing land system, and each of these sections advocate reforms in their own interests. The reforms advocated are, of course, of a very conflicting character, the reforming landlords wishing, on the one hand, to make their estates individual private property, and not, as they are now, family private property; whereas the reformers who take their stand on the inalienable right of the people to the soil of their country contend, on the other hand, for the entire abolition of private property in land.
 It will be seen from the hurried and imperfect survey we have taken of the conditions under which the present land movement in Great Britain had its rise that the public mind was powerfully directed towards the land question, and the faint outlines we have given of the philosophical and political declarations that preceded it may, perhaps, show how the way was paved for the more radical doctrines in regard to the land which are now being promulgated.  John Stuart Mill had a thorough grasp of the principles that lie at the basis of the land question, as one short sentence will show. "The essential principle of property," he wrote, "being to assure to all persons what they have produced by their labour and accumulated by their abstinence, the principle can not apply to what is not the produce of labour, the raw material of the earth." But in 1871 Mill thought it was hopeless to pre sent that doctrine prominently before his fellow-countrymen, at least any further than was necessary to secure the arrest for the public of the "unearned increment" in the value of land. Had he lived another ten years he would undoubtedly have swelled the ranks of those who drew up the programme of tho Land Nationalization Society, and given the cause an extraordinary impetus. For it was not only the philosophical and economical aspects of the land question that now attracted public attention, but the moral aspects as well; and an appeal was addressed to the hearts and consciences of men as well as to their heads and their pocket. Dr. Thomas Nulty, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Meath, in a letter to the clergy and laity of his Diocese, had boldly grappled with the subject, and certain passages from that letter have been circulated far and wide on both sides of the Atlantic. The following sentences in particular have produced a deep and wide spread effect :— "The land of every country is to the people of that country or nation what the earth is to the whole human race. That is to say, the land of every country is the gift of its Creator to the people of that country ; it is the patrimony and inheritance bequeathed to them by their common Father, out of which they can, by continuous labour and toil, provide themselves with everything they require for their maintenance and support, for their material comfort and enjoyment. God was perfectly free in the act by which He created us ; but having created us, He bound Himself by that act to provide us with the means necessary for our subsistence. The land is the only means of this kind now known to us. The land, therefore, of every country is the common property of the people of that country, because its real owner, the Creator who made it, has transferred it as a voluntary gift to them. Terram autem dedit filiis hominum. Now, as every individual in that country is a creature and child of God, and as all His creatures are equal in His sight, any settlement of the land of a country that would exclude the humblest man in that country from his share of the common inheritance would be not only an in justice and a wrong to that man, but, more over, would be an impious resistance to the benevolent intentions of his Creator." Let it be understood that this is only the deliverance of a Prelate of the Church of Rome, and not of the Church itself. A few Roman Catholic clergymen have joined Bishop Nulty in enunciating the land doctrine he teaches, but their utterances have no other authority than what they acquire from the reputations of the individuals who make them.
 No branch of the Christian Church has pronounced any decision on the moral elements involved in the land question, tho attitude of all being exactly similar to that maintained towards the question of slavery, or the right of private property in the flesh and bones of human beings, which, we need hardly remind our readers, had at no remote date the same legal sanction that property in land possesses. Very significant are Dr. Nulty's references to slavery, and not the less so that he deals gently and apologetically with the Church's relations towards that institution. "Slavery," he says, "is found to have existed as a social institution in almost all nations, civilized as well as barbarous, and in every age of the world, up almost to our own times. . . . Hardly any one had the public spirit to question its character or to denounce its excesses ; it had no struggle to make for its existence, and the degradation in which it held its unhappy victims was universally regarded as nothing worse than a mere sentimental grievance. On the other hand, the justice of the right of property which a master claimed in his slaves was universally accepted in tho light of a first principle of morality. His slaves were either born on his estate, and he had to submit to the labour and the cost of rearing and maintaining them to manhood, or he acquired them by inheritance or by free gift ; or, failing these, he acquired them by the right of purchase, having paid in exchange for them what, according to the usages of society and the common estimation of his countrymen, was regarded as their full pecuniary value. Property therefore in slaves was regarded as as sacred and as inviolable as any other species of property. So deeply rooted and so universally received was this conviction that the Christian religion itself, though it recognised no distinction between Jew and Gentile, between slave or freeman, cautiously abstained from denouncing slavery itself as an injustice or a wrong. It prudently tolerated this crying evil, because in the state of public feeling then existing, and at the low standard of enlightenment and intelligence then prevailing, it was simply impossible to remedy it. Thus, then, had slavery come down to owe own time as an established social institution, carrying with it the practical sanction and approval of ages and nations, and surrounded with a prestige of standing and general acceptance well calculated to recommend it to men's feelings and sympathies. And yet it was the embodiment of the most odious and cruel injustice that ever afflicted humanity." The italics are our own, and they might of themselves suffice for comment ; but we may remark that " the public feeling then existing" with regard to slavery, and "the low standard of enlightenment and intelligence," which the Church found it impossible to purify and elevate, were purified and elevated by men who had no ecclesiastical authority or pretensions whatever ; and these men have taught the Church and humanity at large that the social institution which was once regarded by all as founded on "a first principle of morality" was verily " the embodiment of the most odious and cruel injustice that ever afflicted humanity." It will be seen when we come to note the latest phase that the present land movement has entered, namely, its presentation as a Land Gospel — i.e., as God's spell or word, or message to mankind regarding the land, that the parallel between slavery and private property in land is strongly insisted upon by many of the advocates of the new land doctrine.
 But we must proceed, without further preface, to lay before our readers a summary of the contributions that have been made to the cause of land reform by Mr. Henry George, the American economist, who is the foremost champion of the abolition of private property in land, and whose treatise, entitled " Progress and Poverty : an enquiry into the cause of industrial depressions, and of increase of want with increase of wealth," is the text-book of radical land reformers. This, however, must be reserved for another article.

South Australian Register 12 May 1883

A WORD UPON POPULATION.

From Chambers' Historical Newspaper.

There are two ways to view mankind— the one proceeding on too narrow an examination of what they have already been, and appear to be, in their present highly artificial and ill assorted social condition ; and the other proceeding on a wide and universal inquiry into their capabilities as rational beings, and their power of remedying, to a great extent, if allowed the free exercise of their ingenuity, nearly all the miseries to which they are subject through the influence of conventional arrangements. These very opposite, views have been taken by men of education end ability, and have been maintained with equal pertinacity on both sides. Those who hold the first as more correct have arrived at the conclusion, that the human race are doomed, through their improvidence, to increase to such an amount that, in the end— however distant the day may be— a universal starvation and the most awful misery will take place ; while those who are of an opposite opinion express it as their belief, that such a doctrine is repugnant, not only to the wise provisions established by the laws of Nature, but to common sense, and that in reality, it is not proved by any obvious fact. Dr. Thomas Chalmers, a Scottish clergyman and professor, is at present the great bulwark of the doctrine of ultimate and universal starvation. No one, as far as we are aware, has yet distinguished himself by being the defender of the opposite views ; but the respectable part of the periodical press has, from time to time, protested against the extraordinary dogma, and endeavoured to explain by liberal interpretation, the question in political economy which involves the production of man in connexion with the quantity of food.
 Dr. Chalmers has recently published a pamphlet, entitled, "The Supreme Importance of a Right Moral to a Right Economical State of the Country," &c. ; by which it appears that the reverend author has been somewhat nettled at the attacks of the reviewers; he therefore again, with redoubled energy, advocates the principles to which he has attached himself, and, what we have long desired, has thus afforded an opportunity of examining with greater minuteness the fallacy of his pretensions to sound philosophy. The position which the doctor assumes is, "that the rate at which population would increase, if the adequate means of subsistence were at all times within reach, greatly exceeds the rate at which the means of subsistence can increase, with all the aids and practical openings, which either the mechanical arts, or the sound and liberal policy of governments, could afford to human labor." Which position we deny ; and our reasons for such a denial are, simply, that no proper proof has ever been brought forward to substantiate the position, and that the excess of pauperism and population, reasoned from, is not the result of natural and permanently-acting causes, but of mismanagement on the part of governments, or of the lack of education and general knowledge. It is our conscientious belief that the human race have never yet had anything like fair play ; and we hold that, if they were let alone, and suffered to pursue fair and judicious means of gaining a subsistence, suggested by their own reasonable faculties or scientific inquiry, and permitted to follow out all rational means of cultivating their understandings, the increase of population would not be greater than the increase of food. The only mode of proving such a position is by pointing to the manner in which nations have originated and grown up—the unfortunate policy by which they have for thousands of years been maintained in a state of deadly enmity with each other, and of internal discord— as well as the deliberate plans pursued in order to keep the people in ignorance, both in respect of pure religion and morality, and of the elements of science and general knowledge. When we look abroad over the world, where do we find any nation advanced to a state of even comparative perfection ? By far the greater number of countries are yet — that is, at the distance of six thousand years from the creation of the globe— inhabited by savages, men in a state of absolute nakedness, who live in huts or holes like the orates which perish. Other countries ere advanced a stage in mental and physical condition; others are still further advanced; and our own may be allowed to occupy the first rank in intelligence : yet, in this very country (except in a particular nook), there is no general system of education ; and such is the state of things that the most magnificent of all human inventions, the art of printing— an art calculated to supersede almost every other means of instruction— is not allowed to be exercised freely. On these deplorable facts we might rest our opposition to the wild and inconclusive theories of Dr. Chalmers; but we have another species of proof to advance.     
In the first place, it admits of demonstration that the people in this country, with all their misery, are on the whole much better fed, lodged, and clothed, than the people were five hundred years ago. Every chapter in our history describes a gradual improvement in the condition of the inhabitants. Such is the highly artificial state of society in the present day that we find many persons exceedingly poor ; but we have now no desolating famines, and few of those fatal epidemical diseases which used to follow in their train. Thus, it is so far certain that our country is in a much better condition than formerly; and this, at least, affords no proof of the approach of universal starvation. On the contrary, it is an evidence that we are in some measure approximating a state of greater excellence.     
Next, as to the plans which may be successfully pursued for bettering our general condition : In an early number of our Journal, we made our readers acquainted with the fact, that the pigeons of North America consumed more food in one day than would support the whole of the fifteen millions of human beings in Great Britain for a week. The question is, then, why the overabundant population of this country have not long since proceeded across the Atlantic, to secure some of the meat of the pigeons, and so relieve, by a grand effort, the pressure of misery at home? It would be argued, however, by Dr. Chalmers, that this extensive process of emigration, however useful in the meanwhile, would have no good effect ultimately ; for were you to cover all the spare lands in the world with our pent-in population, still you will never relieve our race. Although we might enjoy ten thousand years of breathing time, at the ten thousandth and first year we would he in a similarly awkward predicament ; and there's the rub. But all this is mere assertion, others will answer ; how is it to be proved ? Oh ! that is quite a different affair. We suppose, because it it seen and felt that things are in a very bad condition with us; because the people increase, however poor they may be ; because the Doctor has perceived that there are miserable purlieus in every large town, where the unhappy weeded-out peasantry of the country fester in indigence, frequently unheeded either by the clergy or the civil magistrate, and who, "for any thing he can tell," might, under more fortunate circumstances, have been creditable members of society— because, in a word, there is a great deal of imprudence and vice, matters must therefore terminate in the way mentioned. Now, we cordially allow that emigration would have ultimately no beneficial effect on the state of our population, provided the intellect of the human race were for ever to continue what it is. But it will not remain what it is; and in its gradual improvement will be found, not only the check on over population, but the cure after such has been accomplished.
 Here, then, we are brought back to the true source of the evil under our notice. Society, as it now seems to exist in this country, is not the result of natural effect, but is an extraordinary jumble of inconsistencies, produced in a way too well known to need any particular elucidation. We have had the most pernicious encouragement given to the growth of population by the demand for soldiers and sailors, to go out and fight the soldiers and sailors of other nations, all for no good whatever, but a great deal of evil. Then, there have been laws to prevent the operative classes from emigrating ; laws to prevent the exportation of goods, and the importation of food; laws to prevent capitalists buying, and, therefore, improving, lands ; laws of every description and character to restrain the human being from making the most of his intellect and skill in honorable trade ; all of which arrangements, and a thousand besides, originating in the barbarous usages of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, have brought our population to what it is— something which the Almighty never intended it to be, and which the laws of Nature cannot sustain. If we add to these causes the little pains taken to cultivate the understandings of the people, and make them more virtuous and provident, we at once see the reason for the poverty, misery, and vice, which afflict us. Hence the outcry of there being too many people in the world, and that the world will some day be in a state of general starvation, and that everything will go to wreck and ruin ; in short, that we may just go and hang ourselves, as fast as we can, to escape dying of hunger. Stuff! Had society not been at once, or by turns, pampered, tortured, and perplexed—had mankind not deliberately planned and accomplished their own miseries — had things been allotted to find their level, we should never have heard the smallest clamour about an over-abundant population.
 It is our object, in the present paper, to put the people in good humour with the laws which govern the universe, and influence the affairs of mankind. We do not believe that the human race are naturally so bad as they are called, or are in such a hopeless case as some folk imagine. The few thousands of years they have sojourned on the surface of the earth are but as a day in comparison with the duration of Time. They have as yet gathered only a little experience. We consider them as only promising children in a young world. Only one or two nations amongst them are earnestly pursuing means of improvement, and the rest have yet to begin. If a far more enlarged process of education be all that is essentially requisite to stem the torrent of improvidence and vice, why need we despond of seeing accomplished— what Dr. Chalmers deems necessary to check the evil he deplores— " a good and adequate educational system pervading the whole mass of the community, both with the culture of knowledge and the culture of principle." For our part, we really cannot discover any insurmountable difficulty in the way. The people of this country, under many disadvantages, have made wonderful advances in intelligence within the last twenty years; and it may be prognosticated that, from the astonishing aptitude which now exists for the acquisition of knowledge, in whatever shape it is presented, in another half century, should no pernicious war intervene, the country will be under a far better and more wholesome system of management. Every succeeding year, greater scope will be afforded for the exercise of the human intellect, and, by the operations of science, our island will be virtually doubled in extent. Proper systems of general instruction will be instituted. It is also within the bounds of possibility that every kind of injurious restraint on the art of printing will be relaxed and removed, and, with this engine of mental improvement alone, there is reason to expect that the great and ancient strongholds of ignorance and vice will very speedily be brought in triumph to the ground. We are not among those who believe that all this can only be a consequence of the dismemberment of society. All will come to pass in the simple ordinary course of events, without convulsion or disturbance of any kind. Enlightened men of all parties are busily conspiring in one great cause, the national welfare, in connexion with domestic peace, and the permanent security of life, property, and opinion— the three, undoubted essentials of happiness among an intelligent people.


Launceston Advertiser 26 September 1833

DR.CHALMERS ON THE PRINCIPLES OF MALTHUS

. . . . . . . . but, with all deductions on either side, the fact is apparent and incontrovertible—that education has made the Scotch people an orderly, law-abiding, industrious, and moral race.

"We give below an extract from a work of Dr. Chalmers. We do not apologise for its length. We have scarcely ever read a delineation full of such striking and painful contrasts.

Paisley was a town in which there was nothing originally to supply a moral stamina but the habits and character of the people. That character was admirable. That even level of society in which some persons have discovered the condition of happiness existed there. There was employment ; there was competence ; but there were no great superfluities. The industry of the weaver enabled him to live in comparative enjoyment, and his taste surrounded his dwelling with all those attractions and amusements which have so often embellished humble life, where it has not been disturbed by either poverty or ambition. There education was universal, and, according to the beautiful narrative, "in every house there was an altar to God." A time, however, came when an impetus was given to the trade of Paisley, and children acquired a mercantile value. Their industry, such as it was, added something considerable to the earnings of the household. The habits of the people were revolutionised. The schools were no longer attended ; the children were deprived of moral training; their precocious independence released them from parental restraint. Habits of providence and forethought ceased from among the people. Marriages were universally early. The whole character of the town was changed, and society presented a scene of moral ruin. This was in Great Britain—a place accessible to all the influences of high civilisation—where the law was strong and punishment could speedily overtake its violators. If such were the consequences there, can we expect less in those outskirts of Australian civilisation ?

The neglect of one generation draws after it the degradation of another. We have had recently an example of what human nature may become by that neglect. Look at those poor children who have just been rescued from the blacks ! In what do they differ from the wretched people whose captives they were? How difficult it is to reconcile ourselves to the thought that the most lovely and intelligent child among us could, by being lost for a few years in the depths of aboriginal degradation, cease to possess intellectually or morally any characteristic in common with the race from which it sprang.

It is true that this is an extreme example, but at least it shows how possible it is for humanity to decline rapidly—how necessary it is that all the appliances of civilisation, and religion should be kept in active operation to prevent that decline, and how hard it is to recover a people when they have once lost the knowledge and the tastes of civilisation.

——

" Paisley is perhaps the most plebeian town of its size in Europe—its population being composed chiefly of weavers, with such accompanying trades and occupations as are dependent upon, or necessary for, the supply of weavers and weaving apparatus.

" As some important practical results, both of a moral and political nature, may be drawn from a review of its past and present history, it is our intention in the present article, to take a cursory view of the general population of that town from about the year 1775, or 80, to the present day ; contrasting its moral and intellectual character at two or three distinct periods, and endeavouring to account for the sad declension in public manners, which, of late, has been so obvious to the country at large.

" To state the simple fact, that the once quiet, sober, moral, and intelligent inhabitants of Paisley, are now generally a turbulent, immoral, and half-educated population, is to state what almost everyone knows and what many mourn over.

" It is, indeed, a melancholy subject for contemplation, that, what was at first eagerly embraced by many, as an addition to their family receipts, has ultimately proved not only a chief cause of individual poverty but of family feuds, insubordination on the part of the children, and, as a natural consequence, a general moral degradation over the whole community.

"From about 1770 to 1800, the manufactures of silk gauzes and fine lawns, flourished in Paisley ; and also during a portion of this period alluded to that of figured-loom and hand-tamboured muslin. These branches afforded to all classes excellent wages ; and being articles of fancy, room was afforded for a display of taste as well as enterprise and intelligence, for which the Paisley weavers were justly conspicuous. Sobriety and frugality being their general character, good wages enabled almost every weaver to possess himself of a small capital.

"Nearly one-half of Paisley at that period was built by weavers from savings off their ordinary wages. Every house had its garden, and every weaver being his own master, could work it when he pleased. Many were excellent florists ; many possessed a tolerable library. Never perhaps in the history of the world, was there a more convincing proof, of the folly of being afraid of a universal and thorough education, especially when impregnated with the religion of the Bible, than in the state of Paisley at that period.

"At the period alluded to, every man, woman, and child above eight or nine years of age, could read the Bible : many could write and cast accounts ; and not a few of the weavers' sons went through a regular course at the Grammar School ? To have had a distant relative unable to read, or one sent to prison for stealing, would have been felt as equally disgraceful.

"The inhabitants were so universally regular in their attendance upon church, and strict afterwards in keeping indoors, that it is recollected, at the end of the last century, or commencement of the present, that not a living creature, save two or three privileged blackguards, were ever seen walking the streets after divine service ; or if any chanced to appear an errand for the doctor was supposed to be the probable cause. Family duties were generally attended to ; and prayer and praise were not confined to the Sabbath evening ; for on week-days, as well as on Sabbath days, the ears of the bystanders were regaled with songs of praise issuing forth from almost every dwelling; and in those days it was no uncommon thing to find the highly respectable weaver a most consistent and truly useful elder of the church.

"At that period, the honest quiet weaver might be seen with his wife, at four or five o'clock sallying forth on an evening's walk, in full Sabbath attire ; the husband, in advance of his wife, carrying the youngest child in his arms, and his wife following, with two, three, or four children ; and perchance, ere their return, a brother and sister-in-law, were honoured with a visit to a cup of tea, to which they experienced a hearty welcome. Nor were little luxuries on such occasions altogether unknown; a weaver then being able to afford them.

" Although early marriages were very common, yet the frequent attendant evils were not immediately felt ; a lad of eighteen or twenty, being quite as able to support a family as his father at forty ; and he did not anticipate those days of darkness and privation, which have since come on Paisley.

" We come now to the mournful cause of the present degraded state of that once moral and happy town. The introduction of the manufactory of imitation Indian shawls, about the year 1800, required that each weaver should employ one, two, or three boys, called draw-boys. Eleven to twelve was the usual age, previous to this period, for sending boys to the loom ; but as boys of any age, above five, were equal to this work of drawing, those of ten were first employed ; then, as the demand increased, those of nine, eight, seven, six, and even five. Girls, too, were by and by introduced into the same employment, and at equally tender years. Many a struggle the honest and intelligent weavers must have had between his duty to his children and his immediate interests. The idea of his children growing up without schooling, must have cost him many a pang ; but the idea of losing 2s. 6d. or 3s. a week, and paying school-wages beside, proved too great a bribe even for parental affection, and, as might have been expected, mammon in the end prevailed, and the practice gradually became too common and familiar to excite more than a passing regret. Children grew up, without either the education or the training which the youth of the country derive from the schoolmaster ; and every year, since 1805, has sent forth its hundreds of unschooled and untamed boys and girls, now become the parents of a still ruder, more undisciplined, and ignorant offspring. Nor was this all. So great was the demand for draw-boys, that ever and anon the town crier went through the streets, offering, not simply 2s. 6d., 3s., or 3s. 6d. a week for the labour of boys and girls, but bed, board, and washing, and a penny to themselves on Saturday night. This was a reward on disobedience to parents—family insubordination, with all its train of evils followed. The son, instead of standing in awe of his father, began to think himself a man, when he was only a brawling impudent boy. On the first, or second quarrel with his father, he felt he might abandon the parental roof, for the less irksome employment of the stranger. The first principle of all subordination was thus early broken up, and the boy who refused to hearken to the voice of his father or his mother, and to honour them, could not be expected when he became a man, ' to fear God, or to honour the king.' If ignorance be the mother of superstitious devotion, it is also the mother of stupid and vulgar contempt. An intelligent and moral people will ever be most ready to give honour where it is due ; and, respecting themselves, will yield a willing respect to intelligence, virtue, rank, and lawful authority, wherever it is placed.

" The increase of the family receipts, arising from the employment of one or more children as draw-boys, ceased on the first slackness in the demand ; for it is evident that the additional sum—we shall suppose of 5s. a week—drawn by the labour of the weaver's children, enabled him to work just at so much lower prices to any manufacturer who might choose to speculate in making goods at the reduced price, in the hope of a future demand. A short period of idleness, on the part of the weavers, would have given time for the overstock of goods to clear off, whereas, this practice of working even extra hours, during the period of a glut, tended to perpetuate the glut, or to render fluctuations arising from this source more frequent, and, along with other causes, to perpetuate low wages. Thus was the employment of their children from five to ten, by the weavers of Paisley, at first an apparent advantage, but in the end a curse ; demonstrating that whatever may appear to be the interest of parents, this year, or next year, it is permanently the interest of them, and their offspring, to refuse every advantage in their temporal concerns, which tends to defraud youth of the first of parental blessings—Education—and that Providence has bound in indissoluble alliance the intelligence, the virtue, and the temporal well-being of society. In 1818-19, there were found full three thousand, Paisley-born and Paisley-bred, who could not read ; and the decline of intelligence has been followed by the decline of that temperance, prudence, and economy which are the cardinal virtues of the working classes, by which alone they can elevate their condition or preserve themselves from sinking into the most abject poverty.

"The Paisley weaver of forty years ago married early, because he foresaw that he could, in decency, support a family, and even save something for sickness or age, or the fluctuations of his trade. The Paisley weaver lad, in 1832, marries equally early, on a pittance that scarcely supports himself, because he has neither judgment to reflect on the misery which he is entailing on himself and others, nor moral principle to feel the solemn obligations of the state into which he is entering. Had the population of this town, continued a well educated, religious population, and, as wages diminished, intelligence and virtue increased, the fall of wages would have been arrested by the natural operation of that prudence, which leads mankind to consult their duty, as well as their inclinations ; and without any knowledge of the principles of Malthus, the operative classes would, like the middle and upper classes, have acted on his principles. It was the practice of the old Paisley weaver, after an attachment was formed, and an engagement entered into, to interpose sometimes a delay of years, in the labour of collecting, their providing or plenishing; that is, a most enormous mass of bed and table linen, an eight-day clock, &c, &c. ; and it was a point of distinction, on the day previous to marriage, by one or other of the parties, to exhibit to all the neighbours, this accumulation of industry and economy. Will the clergy of Paisley inform us how many marriages they now celebrate annually, where the parties have such plenishing to exhibit, with honest satisfaction, to their neighbours ? Or, rather, how many enter into the state of wedlock, without one thought of the future, and who know not nor care not what they do ?

" Those who have no consideration concerning the things of this life, are not likely to have any forethought regarding the life to come; and just in proportion as the modern Paisley weaver is without religion does he despise it. All clergy are necessarily hypocrites, as all kings and magistrates are, in their estimation, tyrants. Unitarianism, infidelity, or reckless profanity, too generally abound ; and the popular cry is against all distinction of ranks. Thus, measuring themselves by themselves, they would reduce society to their own level. Paisley thus furnishes an affecting illustration of the declaration of Holy Writ, ' That righteousness exalteth a city ; but sin is the ruin of any people.' "


The Sydney Morning Herald 1 November 1859