population occasions; and then consider if any disadvantages arise from it to overbalance them. But we will not do this on the mistaken principle of seeking only the greatest happiness of the greatest number; because this seems to me to be an evil principle in its pratical applications, as it involves the perpetual sacrifice of the minority to the majority. Forty-nine may be made miserable that fifty-one may be happier! the greater number may enjoy and tyrannize! the rest must, at their pleasure and for their convenience, submit and suffer! Instead of this, we will be guided by the Christian tenets of doing good to all, and of doing to every one what we desire should be done to ourselves.

All national greatness is founded upon population and arises from it. There can no more be national greatness without population-a population adequate to the magnitude-than there can be human nature without human beings. It is the people which constitute every state, not the soil they tread on. They form the country, which takes its station in the charts of history; and nations arise to be such only as their populations enlarge. It is this increase which converts a family into a tribe, and a tribe into a people, and a people into a powerful, civilized, and distinguished nation. Stop the multiplication anywhere, and it dwindles into inferiority and feebleness in every age and climate. The first marking symptom of a thriving country is the increase of its popula

tion.

It was not Africa which made Carthage what it was, but the Tyrian emigrants, who, by their settlement and multiplication, formed and established, as they increased, the Carthaginian empire on the African shore. When the Roman hostilities broke up the Punic population, the Carthaginian state and nation disappeared, though their territory remains where it was, and the walls and edifices were long subsisting upon it, and new comers afterward stationed themselves within them. It was by the continual enlargement of its various populations that Greece arose, with its multiplications, to splendour and fame within itself, and enriched and dignified its immortal nation by numerous settlements and colonizations elsewhere.*

It is an interesting fact, that, in our own days, an evidence should occur of the Athenian colonization of the Adriatic. Greek vases have been found in Adria, and led to a discussion how they came there, and

From this cause all the great empires of antiquity, and the prosperous kingdoms of modern days, have ascended to their wealth and celebrity. The multiplications of their populations have always been the basis of their progressive eminence, and always will be the indispensable materials of their stability, their affluence, their interior strength, and their external power. The Roman empire fell for ever when its population was shattered and consumed. Its hills, and Tiber, and city ressain, but the ancient greatness and the ancient Romans have vanished together, to reappear no more. A nation once exterminated can never be remade.

The elements of all political advantages and grandeur to a country lie in its population, and nowhere else. The richest Boil, the gold and diamond mines, the finest quarries and noblest rivers of any region, are nothing to society without the hands and arms that extract and apply their utilities from the passive ground which contains and conceals them. It is multitude which makes a people, and their local station becomes important and dignified in proportion to their increase, and to those activities which their augmentation excites and makes necessary. Wealth, industry, produce, arts, comfort, convenience, influence, talent, and power augment as they multiply and decline as they diminish. There is not a single state or nation which has arisen to notice or fallen from it but illustrates these conclusions. It is, therefore, to act in contradiction to recorded history and to living experience to assert that enlarging populations are not a national benefit, and have not been the solid means by which national aggrandizement and dominion have been most effectually established and up

held.

From this general reasoning let us pass into more particu lar observations.

Population cannot increase, unless there be subsistence to maintain it, and never arises where there is no provision for it. The food was made at the creation, before the living beings were formed who were to use it; and in every period what connexion could have been between that region and Adria. No Information in ancient authors elucidated the question: but in this last summer, 1836, Mr. L. Ross, who is making excavations at Athens, in prosecution of his archeological researches, dug up an inscription, which states that a colony from Athens, under a leader named Miltrades, settled in Adria 325 years before the Christian era. He has lately published an account in the "Kunstblatt of Stutgard" of this discovery.

since the same order in the course of nature has ensued. Provision everywhere precedes the gift of life. No animals of any kind arise where there is no food; but all which come into being find their maintenance at hand. This plan is so remarkably and invariably pursued in all the systems of nature, that every animal mother which does not herself feed her young, is always led to lay her eggs where the emerging offspring will find what they require. I believe I have mentioned some instances of this sort in the first volume of these letters.

In the human race, the parents would not be alive to have their children unless they had sufficient sustenance to keep themselves in being. Therefore, the existence of those who live, and the fact of females being mothers, are at all times evidence that there is on the earth, or regularly arising from it, enough to maintain every coexisting race. There could not be either parents or offspring unless this were the case. Population thus follows subsistence, and never comes where this is not. Hence the very appearance of population is a testimony that the food which supports them is at that time in existence also.

That food is then in existence is likewise a pledge to us from nature that it will continue to be producible. More food has hitherto always come from the earth as man has applied for it, although he has been increasing from six persons to a thousand millions of human beings. The experience of her past bounty is the only pledge we have from nature for her future supplies: for we must remember that she never gives more than an annual sufficiency. She must renew her gift every year, or we all perish. The whole of mankind are, therefore, as much living with the possibility of being starved as any increasing population can be, and perhaps as much as any individual is. We cannot command the sunshine, nor govern the rain, nor avert the frost or hail. We are therefore

at the mercy, every year, of him who has this power; and if his constant kindness in this respect releases us from any actual dread of the failure that would ruin us, it is fractious selftormenting to harass ourselves with fear that the additional need of a fiftieth or a hundreth part more will not still be as producible as it hitherto has been. The existence of every population, whatever be its numbers, is therefore a demonstration that it has sufficient food; and the uniform increase

of it, with every enlargement of mankind for the last 4000 years, is the surest pledge we can have that the augmentation of the one will be attended with the same augmentation of the other, which has hitherto never failed to arise. We have as much reason to doubt the coming of the supply at all for any, as to be apprehensive that it will not come with the augmentation we may require. He who grants it has thus far always granted it to our fair industry, in the quantity which has been from time to time wanted, although our claims for the donation have been from age to age enlarging. To suppose that he will not continue to do in this respect what he has, up to this moment, invariably done, is to believe without the smallest evidence, and in opposition to all experience, that he will now suddenly change his system, both of nature and Providence, and doom us to destruction for continuing to fulfil his will in perpetuating the series of his human race. Our conclusion therefore is, that the very rise of population is in itself an evidence of present sufficiency, and that is a token and an assurance of the continuation of the supply.

LETTER XVIII.

Further considerations on the Benefits which arise from an increasing Population.

MY DEAR SYDNEY,

The visible results of an increasing population display to us the benefits we derive from it. We will notice the most prominent of these, as they regard the nation, the age, and the individual, and as they affect human nature itself.

The appointed and sustained division of mankind into many nations makes their comparative populations important objects of their concern with respect to each other. The most numerous are always the most powerful, if other things are equal; and this superiority balances many disadvantages, and puts the less populous in the greater danger of aggression or conquest. Unless, then, other nations are willing or able to curtail their populations, we must grow as they grow, or we shall

be in our ordinary power while they have magnified into a giant's strength. If, then, we desire national safety, independence, and foreign respect, we should rejoice that the living materials from which we derive them increase in full proportion to the popular multiplications of the surrounding communities. The smaller our numbers, the less must be the amount of our naval and military protectors. These must be always in a proper ratio to the amount of the whole people, for a due portion only can be spared or maintained by the rest. To be in the first rank of existing powers, our numbers must keep in that quantity which raises others into that stage; if not, the diminution will lower us into those inferior rates to which national disadvantages are continually accruing. Hence in this day of large kingdoms and populous nations there is no alternative between enlarging numbers and inferiority, danger and decline. But experience everywhere shows that there far more general comfort and competence to every class of society in a prosperous and powerful nation than in those which are feeble and subordinate. One of the statesman's greatest objects, in taking the census of his countrymen, is to show to other states the advanced strength, the ability to maintain its independence, and the flourishing condition of his own. The increase of its population is the most compendious evidence to other governments of the internal vigour and social healthfulness from which it has arisen, and its sufficiency to be its own protector. An increasing census is an enlarging shield of defence from all exterior aggression; it is an ægis which deters as well as guards.

Every newborn individual, even the poorest, must, if he lives, have food, clothes, and habitation, furniture and implements, and conveniences of many kinds which he cannot, in a civilized society, make for himself, but which must be worked and provided by others, and be sought for from them. Every new comer, by this demand and its supply, cannot but aug. ment the productions, and, in them, the property of the soci ety to which he is added, and furnishes further employment for those who must earn their enjoyments by their labour, and who are ever willing to do so wherever that is required. Agriculture must raise more corn; the manufacturers fabricate more goods; the builders erect fresh houses or cottages; artisans of all sorts must make more of their commodities; and there must be everywhere more shopkeepers to sell them.