Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches - Volume 2 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (best e reader for epub .txt) 📕

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