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The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay. Vol 2

E >> Edinburgh Review >> The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay. Vol 2




We need not here examine why it is that the human race is less
fruitful in great cities than in small towns or in the open
country. The fact has long been notorious. We are inclined to
attribute it to the same causes which tend to abridge human life
in great cities,--to general sickliness and want of tone,
produced by close air and sedentary employments. Thus far, and
thus far only, we agree with Mr Sadler, that, when population is
crowded together in such masses that the general health and
energy of the frame are impaired by the condensation, and by the
habits attending on the condensation, then the fecundity of the
race diminishes. But this is evidently a check of the same class
with war, pestilence, and famine. It is a check for the
operation of which Mr Malthus has allowed.

That any condensation which does not affect the general health
will affect fecundity, is not only not proved--it is disproved--
by Mr Sadler's own tables.

Mr Sadler passes on to Prussia, and sums up his information
respecting that country as follows:--

(In the following table numbers appear in the order:
Inhabitants on a Square Mile, German.
Number of Provinces.
Births to 100 Marriages, 1754.
Births to 100 Marriages, 1784.
Births to 100 Marriages, Busching.)

Under 1000 : 2 : 434 : 472 : 503
1000 to 2000 : 4 : 414 : 455 : 454
2000 to 3000 : 6 : 384 : 424 : 426
3000 to 4000 : 2 : 365 : 408 : 394

After the table comes the boast as usual:

"Thus is the law of population deduced from the registers of
Prussia also: and were the argument to pause here, it is
conclusive. The results obtained from the registers of this and
the preceding countries, exhibiting, as they do most clearly, the
principle of human increase, it is utterly impossible should have
been the work of chance; on the contrary, the regularity with
which the facts class themselves in conformity with that
principle, and the striking analogy which the whole of them bear
to each other, demonstrate equally the design of Nature, and the
certainty of its accomplishment."

We are sorry to disturb Mr Sadler's complacency. But, in our
opinion, this table completely disproves his whole principle. If
we read the columns perpendicularly, indeed, they seem to be in
his favour. But how stands the case if we read horizontally?
Does Mr Sadler believe that, during the thirty years which
elapsed between 1754 and 1784, the population of Prussia had been
diminishing? No fact in history is better ascertained than that,
during the long peace which followed the seven years' war, it
increased with great rapidity. Indeed, if the fecundity were
what Mr Sadler states it to have been, it must have increased
with great rapidity. Yet, the ratio of births to marriages is
greater in 1784 than in 1754, and that in every province. It is,
therefore, perfectly clear that the fecundity does not diminish
whenever the density of the population increases.

We will try another of Mr Sadler's tables:

TABLE LXXXI.

Showing the Estimated Prolificness of Marriages in England at the
close of the Seventeenth Century.

(In the following table the name of the Place is followed in
order by:
Number of Inhabitants.
One Annual Marriage, to.
Number of Marriages.
Children to one Marriage.
Total Number of Births.

London : 530,000 : 106 : 5,000 : 4. : 20,000
Large Towns : 870,000 : 128 : 6,800 : 4.5 : 30,000
Small Towns and
Country Places : 4,100,000 : 141 : 29,200 : 4.8 : 140,160
-------------------------------------------
: 5,500,000 : 134 : 41,000 : 4.65 : 190,760

Standing by itself, this table, like most of the others, seems to
support Mr Sadler's theory. But surely London, at the close of
the seventeenth century, was far more thickly peopled than the
kingdom of England now is. Yet the fecundity in London at the
close of the seventeenth century was 4; and the average fecundity
of the whole kingdom now is not more, according to Mr Sadler,
than 3 1/2. Then again, the large towns in 1700 were far more
thickly peopled than Westmoreland and the North Riding of
Yorkshire now are. Yet the fecundity in those large towns was
then 4.5. And Mr Sadler tells us that it is now only 4.2 in
Westmoreland and the North Riding.

It is scarcely necessary to say anything about the censuses of
the Netherlands, as Mr Sadler himself confesses that there is
some difficulty in reconciling them with his theory, and helps
out his awkward explanation by supposing, quite gratuitously, as
it seems to us, that the official documents are inaccurate. The
argument which he has drawn from the United States will detain us
but for a very short time. He has not told us,--perhaps he had
not the means of telling us,--what proportion the number of
births in the different parts of that country bears to the number
of marriages. He shows that in the thinly peopled states the
number of children bears a greater proportion to the number of
grown-up people than in the old states; and this, he conceives,
is a sufficient proof that the condensation of the population is
unfavourable to fecundity. We deny the inference altogether.
Nothing can be more obvious than the explanation of the
phenomenon. The back settlements are for the most part peopled
by emigration from the old states; and emigrants are almost
always breeders. They are almost always vigorous people in the
prime of life. Mr Sadler himself, in another part of his book,
in which he tries very unsuccessfully to show that the rapid
multiplication of the people of America is principally owing to
emigration from Europe, states this fact in the plainest manner:

"Nothing is more certain, than that emigration is almost
universally supplied by 'single persons in the beginning of
mature life;' nor, secondly, that such persons, as Dr Franklin
long ago asserted, 'marry and raise families.'

"Nor is this all. It is not more true, that emigrants, generally
speaking, consist of individuals in the prime of life, than that
'they are the most active and vigorous' of that age, as Dr
Seybert describes them to be. They are, as it respects the
principle at issue, a select class, even compared with that of
their own age, generally considered. Their very object in
leaving their native countries is to settle in life, a phrase
that needs no explanation; and they do so. No equal number of
human beings, therefore, have ever given so large or rapid an
increase to a community as 'settlers' have invariably done."

It is perfectly clear that children are more numerous in the back
settlements of America than in the maritime states, not because
unoccupied land makes people prolific, but because the most
prolific people go to the unoccupied land.

Mr Sadler having, as he conceives, fully established his theory
of population by statistical evidence, proceeds to prove, "that
it is in unison, or rather required by the principles of
physiology." The difference between himself and his opponents he
states as follows:--

"In pursuing this part of my subject, I must begin by reminding
the reader of the difference between those who hold the
superfecundity of mankind and myself, in regard to those
principles which will form the basis of the present argument.
They contend, that production precedes population; I, on the
contrary, maintain that population precedes, and is indeed the
cause of, production. They teach that man breeds up to the
capital, or in proportion to the abundance of the food, he
possesses: I assert, that he is comparatively sterile when he is
wealthy, and that he breeds in proportion to his poverty; not
meaning, however, by that poverty, a state of privation
approaching to actual starvation, any more than, I suppose, they
would contend, that extreme and culpable excess is the grand
patron of population. In a word, they hold that a state of ease
and affluence is the great promoter of prolificness. I maintain
that a considerable degree of labour, and even privation, is a
more efficient cause of an increased degree of human fecundity."

To prove this point, he quotes Aristotle, Hippocrates, Dr Short,
Dr Gregory, Dr Perceval, M. Villermi, Lord Bacon, and Rousseau.
We will not dispute about it; for it seems quite clear to us that
if he succeeds in establishing it he overturns his own theory.
If men breed in proportion to their poverty, as he tells us
here,--and at the same time breed in inverse proportion to their
numbers, as he told us before,--it necessarily follows that the
poverty of men must be in inverse proportion to their numbers.
Inverse proportion, indeed, as we have shown, is not the phrase
which expresses Mr Sadler's meaning. To speak more correctly, it
follows, from his own positions, that, if one population be
thinner than another, it will also be poorer. Is this the fact?
Mr Sadler tells us, in one of those tables which we have already
quoted, that in the United States the population is four to a
square mile, and the fecundity 5.22 to a marriage, and that in
Russia the population is twenty-three to a square mile, and the
fecundity 4.94 to a marriage. Is the North American labourer
poorer than the Russian boor? If not, what becomes of Mr
Sadler's argument?

The most decisive proof of Mr Sadler's theory, according to him,
is that which he has kept for the last. It is derived from the
registers of the English Peerage. The peers, he says, and says
truly, are the class with respect to whom we possess the most
accurate statistical information.

"Touching their NUMBER, this has been accurately known and
recorded ever since the order has existed in the country. For
several centuries past, the addition to it of a single individual
has been a matter of public interest and notoriety: this
hereditary honour conferring not personal dignity merely, but
important privileges, and being almost always identified with
great wealth and influence. The records relating to it are kept
with the most scrupulous attention, not only by heirs and
expectants, but they are appealed to by more distant connections,
as conferring distinction on all who can claim such affinity.
Hence there are few disputes concerning successions to this rank,
but such as go back to very remote periods. In later times, the
marriages, births, and deaths, of the nobility, have not only
been registered by and known to those personally interested, but
have been published periodically, and, consequently, subject to
perpetual correction and revision; while many of the most
powerful motives which can influence the human mind conspire to
preserve these records from the slightest falsification.
Compared with these, therefore, all other registers, or reports,
whether of sworn searchers or others, are incorrectness itself."

Mr Sadler goes on to tell us that the peers are a marrying class,
and that their general longevity proves them to be a healthy
class. Still peerages often become extinct;--and from this fact
he infers that they are a sterile class. So far, says he, from
increasing in geometrical progression, they do not even keep up
their numbers. "Nature interdicts their increase."

"Thus," says he, "in all ages of the world, and in every nation
of it, have the highest ranks of the community been the most
sterile, and the lowest the most prolific. As it respects our
own country, from the lowest grade of society, the Irish peasant,
to the highest, the British peer, this remains a conspicuous
truth; and the regulation of the degree of fecundity conformably
to this principle, through the intermediate gradations of
society, constitutes one of the features of the system developed
in these pages."

We take the issue which Mr Sadler has himself offered. We agree
with him, that the registers of the English Peerage are of far
higher authority than any other statistical documents. We are
content that by those registers his principle should be judged.
And we meet him by positively denying his facts. We assert that
the English nobles are not only not a sterile, but an eminently
prolific, part of the community. Mr Sadler concludes that they
are sterile, merely because peerages often become extinct. Is
this the proper way of ascertaining the point? Is it thus that
he avails himself of those registers on the accuracy and fulness
of which he descants so largely? Surely his right course would
have been to count the marriages, and the number of births in the
Peerage. This he has not done;--but we have done it. And what
is the result?

It appears from the last edition of Debrett's "Peerage",
published in 1828, that there were at that time 287 peers of the
United Kingdom, who had been married once or oftener. The whole
number of marriages contracted by these 287 peers was 333. The
number of children by these marriages was 1437,--more than five
to a peer,--more than 4.3 to a marriage,--more, that is to say,
than the average number in those counties of England in which,
according to Mr Sadler's own statement, the fecundity is the
greatest.

But this is not all. These marriages had not, in 1828, produced
their full effect. Some of them had been very lately contracted.
In a very large proportion of them there was every probability of
additional issue. To allow for this probability, we may safely
add one to the average which we have already obtained, and rate
the fecundity of a noble marriage in England at 5.3;--higher than
the fecundity which Mr Sadler assigns to the people of the United
States. Even if we do not make this allowance, the average
fecundity of marriages of peers is higher by one-fifth than the
average fecundity of marriages throughout the kingdom. And this
is the sterile class! This is the class which "Nature has
interdicted from increasing!" The evidence to which Mr Sadler
has himself appealed proves that his principle is false,--utterly
false,--wildly and extravagantly false. It proves that a class,
living during half of every year in the most crowded population
in the world, breeds faster than those who live in the country;--
that the class which enjoys the greatest degree of luxury and
ease breeds faster than the class which undergoes labour and
privation. To talk a little in Mr Sadler's style, we must own
that we are ourselves surprised at the results which our
examination of the peerage has brought out. We certainly should
have thought that the habits of fashionable life, and long
residence even in the most airy parts of so great a city as
London, would have been more unfavourable to the fecundity of the
higher orders than they appear to be.

Peerages, it is true, often become extinct. But it is quite
clear, from what we have stated, that this is not because
peeresses are barren. There is no difficulty in discovering what
the causes really are. In the first place, most of the titles of
our nobles are limited to heirs male; so that, though the average
fecundity of a noble marriage is upwards of five, yet, for the
purpose of keeping up a peerage, it cannot be reckoned at much
more than two and a half. Secondly, though the peers are, as Mr
Sadler says, a marrying class, the younger sons of peers are
decidedly not a marrying class; so that a peer, though he has at
least as great a chance of having a son as his neighbours, has
less chance than they of having a collateral heir.

We have now disposed, we think, of Mr Sadler's principle of
population. Our readers must, by this time, be pretty well
satisfied as to his qualifications for setting up theories of his
own. We will, therefore, present them with a few instances of
the skill and fairness which he shows when he undertakes to pull
down the theories of other men. The doctrine of Mr Malthus, that
population, if not checked by want, by vice, by excessive
mortality, or by the prudent self-denial of individuals, would
increase in a geometric progression, is, in Mr Sadler's opinion,
at once false and atrocious.

"It may at once be denied," says he, "that human increase
proceeds geometrically; and for this simple but decisive reason,
that the existence of a geometrical ratio of increase in the
works of nature is neither true nor possible. It would fling
into utter confusion all order, time, magnitude, and space."

This is as curious a specimen of reasoning as any that has been
offered to the world since the days when theories were founded on
the principle that nature abhors a vacuum. We proceed a few
pages further, however; and we then find that geometric
progression is unnatural only in those cases in which Mr Malthus
conceives that it exists; and that, in all cases in which Mr
Malthus denies the existence of a geometric ratio, nature changes
sides, and adopts that ratio as the rule of increase.

Mr Malthus holds that subsistence will increase only in an
arithmetical ratio. "As far as nature has to do with the
question," says Mr Sadler, "men might, for instance, plant twice
the number of peas, and breed from a double number of the same
animals, with equal prospect of their multiplication." Now, if
Mr Sadler thinks that, as far as nature is concerned, four sheep
will double as fast as two, and eight as fast as four, how can he
deny that the geometrical ratio of increase does exist in the
works of nature? Or has he a definition of his own for
geometrical progression, as well as for inverse proportion?

Mr Malthus, and those who agree with him, have generally referred
to the United States, as a country in which the human race
increases in a geometrical ratio, and have fixed on thirty-five
years as the term in which the population of that country doubles
itself. Mr Sadler contends that it is physically impossible for
a people to double in twenty-five years; nay, that thirty-five
years is far too short a period,--that the Americans do not
double by procreation in less than forty-seven years,--and that
the rapid increase of their numbers is produced by emigration
from Europe.

Emigration has certainly had some effect in increasing the
population of the United States. But so great has the rate of
that increase been that, after making full allowance for the
effect of emigration, there will be a residue, attributable to
procreation alone, amply sufficient to double the population in
twenty-five years.

Mr Sadler states the results of the four censuses as follows:--

"There were, of white inhabitants, in the whole of the United
States in 1790, 3,093,111; in 1800, 4,309,656; in 1810,
5,862,093; and in 1820, 7,861,710. The increase, in the first
term, being 39 per cent.; that in the second, 36 per cent.; and
that in the third and last, 33 per cent. It is superfluous to
say, that it is utterly impossible to deduce the geometric theory
of human increase, whatever be the period of duplication, from
such terms as these."

Mr Sadler is a bad arithmetician. The increase in the last term
is not as he states it, 33 per cent., but more than 34 per cent.
Now, an increase of 32 per cent. in ten years, is more than
sufficient to double the population in twenty-five years. And
there is, we think, very strong reason to believe that the white
population of the United States does increase by 32 per cent.
every ten years.

Our reason is this. There is in the United States a class of
persons whose numbers are not increased by emigration,--the negro
slaves. During the interval which elapsed between the census of
1810 and the census of 1820, the change in their numbers must
have been produced by procreation, and by procreation alone.
Their situation, though much happier than that of the wretched
beings who cultivate the sugar plantations of Trinidad and
Demerara, cannot be supposed to be more favourable to health and
fecundity than that of free labourers. In 1810, the slave-trade
had been but recently abolished; and there were in consequence
many more male than female slaves,--a circumstance, of course,
very unfavourable to procreation. Slaves are perpetually passing
into the class of freemen; but no freeman ever descends into
servitude; so that the census will not exhibit the whole effect
of the procreation which really takes place.

We find, by the census of 1810, that the number of slaves in the
Union was then 1,191,000. In 1820, they had increased to
1,538,000. That is to say, in ten years, they had increased 29
per cent.--within three per cent. of that rate of increase which
would double their numbers in twenty-five years. We may, we
think, fairly calculate that, if the female slaves had been as
numerous as the males, and if no manumissions had taken place,
the census of the slave population would have exhibited an
increase of 32 per cent. in ten years.

If we are right in fixing on 32 per cent. as the rate at which
the white population of America increases by procreation in ten
years, it will follow that, during the last ten years of the
eighteenth century, nearly one-sixth of the increase was the
effect of emigration; from 1800 to 1810, about one-ninth; and
from 1810 to 1820, about one-seventeenth. This is what we should
have expected; for it is clear that, unless the number of
emigrants be constantly increasing, it must, as compared with the
resident population, be relatively decreasing. The number of
persons added to the population of the United States by
emigration, between 1810 and 1820, would be nearly 120,000. From
the data furnished by Mr Sadler himself, we should be inclined to
think that this would be a fair estimate.

"Dr Seybert says, that the passengers to ten of the principal
ports of the United States, in the year 1817, amounted to 22,235;
of whom 11,977 were from Great Britain and Ireland; 4164 from
Germany and Holland; 1245 from France; 58 from Italy, 2901 from
the British possessions in North America; 1569 from the West
Indies; and from all other countries, 321. These, however, we
may conclude, with the editor of Styles's Register, were far
short of the number that arrived."

We have not the honour of knowing either Dr Seybert or the editor
of Styles's Register. We cannot, therefore, decide on their
respective claims to our confidence so peremptorily as Mr Sadler
thinks fit to do. Nor can we agree to what Mr Sadler very
gravely assigns as a reason for disbelieving Dr Seyberts's
testimony. "Such accounts," he says, "if not wilfully
exaggerated, must always fall short of the truth." It would be a
curious question of casuistry to determine what a man ought to do
in a case in which he cannot tell the truth except by being
guilty of wilful exaggeration. We will, however, suppose, with
Mr Sadler, that Dr Seybert, finding himself compelled to choose
between two sins, preferred telling a falsehood to exaggerating;
and that he has consequently underrated the number of emigrants.
We will take it at double of the Doctor's estimate, and suppose
that, in 1817, 45,000 Europeans crossed to the United States.
Now, it must be remembered that the year 1817 was a year of the
severest and most general distress all over Europe,--a year of
scarcity everywhere, and of cruel famine in some places. There
can, therefore, be no doubt that the emigration of 1817 was very
far above the average, probably more than three times that of an
ordinary year. Till the year 1815, the war rendered it almost
impossible to emigrate to the United States either from England
or from the Continent. If we suppose the average emigration of
the remaining years to have been 16,000, we shall probably not be
much mistaken. In 1818 and 1819, the number was certainly much
beyond that average; in 1815 and 1816, probably much below it.
But, even if we were to suppose that, in every year from the
peace to 1820, the number of emigrants had been as high as we
have supposed it to be in 1817, the increase by procreation among
the white inhabitants of the United States would still appear to
be about 30 per cent. in ten years.

Mr Sadler acknowledges that Cobbett exaggerates the number of
emigrants when he states it at 150,000 a year. Yet even this
estimate, absurdly great as it is, would not be sufficient to
explain the increase of the population of the United States on Mr
Sadler's principles. He is, he tells us, "convinced that
doubling in 35 years is a far more rapid duplication than ever
has taken place in that country from procreation only." An
increase of 20 per cent. in ten years, by procreation, would
therefore be the very utmost that he would allow to be possible.
We have already shown, by reference to the census of the slave
population, that this doctrine is quite absurd. And, if we
suppose it to be sound, we shall be driven to the conclusion that
above eight hundred thousand people emigrated from Europe to the
United States in a space of little more than five years. The
whole increase of the white population from 1810 to 1820 was
within a few hundreds of 2,000,000. If we are to attribute to
procreation only 20 per cent. on the number returned by the
census of 1810, we shall have about 830,000 persons to account
for in some other way;--and to suppose that the emigrants who
went to America between the peace of 1815 and the census of 1820,
with the children who were born to them there, would make up that
number, would be the height of absurdity.

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