year, in others before two years, in ours nearly under three. As knowledge increases, and parental judgment improves, and the desire to rear the offspring enlarges, and the dread of inability to maintain them lessens, and more care is therefore applied to preserve them, this very early mortality will be much diminished. Yet it seems too great to be entirely prevented by any human efforts. It has the appearance of being one of the constant laws that are at present attached to our parental system. This dispensation is one of the afflictions which has been assigned to accompany the present state of our existence; but it leads us to recollect that the spirit of life is not extinguished by earthly mortality. It is only born here to reside also elsewhere, and the action of death is but a removal of it to another locality; so that, as far as it concerns the individual soul, it can make little apparent difference to that whether it passes its being in this world or in another. As, while it is in being, it must exist somewhere, its removal by death only changes the scene of its consciousness; and when this occurs in infancy, the transfer is effected before its young affections have become much developed, and while its actual place of being must be most indifferent to it. If it departs from parental attentions here, to which its birth entitled it, it is still under the care of its best and greatest Parent, and cannot, therefore, be in any way injured by the change of its place of being. We know not where this precisely is, or in what society it passes; but we may be certain, from the manifest benevolence and assured kindness of our Almighty Benefactor to every unoffending human creature, that the removal never will be to the disadvantage of those who are thus removed; and their disappearance, with the conviction that they are living happily in some other region of being, will then be a means of extending our thoughts and affections from our temporary world to those grand future destinies which we are exhorted never to forget.* *The Rev. T. Dale, in his pleasing poem on the Death of the Last Child, has consoled himself with views of this description, which it may be soothing to others to read and think of. Farewell, my young blossom! The fairest, the fleetest; The pride of my bosom, The last, and the sweetest, On thee my heart centred I see thy bloom wasting, To linger to languish That life may be sorrow! And heaven is before thee. Oh loveliest! oh dearest ! My prayer still hath bless'd thee; How welcome that sighing! My God! I adore thee! Take the gem that thou gavest, It is THINE and for ever! Christian Keepsake, 1837. LETTER XVI. Sketches of the Plans and Principles on which Population has been conducted; and of the Purposes which are effectuated by it.—It never has been injurious to Society. MY DEAR SON, Having gone through our statistical examinations of the natural laws and experienced course of human population, we may proceed to reason on the Divine plans concerning it for which we have laid the preceding foundation. From the historical information which we possess of the state and transactions of the world before we were born, we are entitled to conclude that it has been, from the beginning, decided by our Creator that mankind should multiply, from the few survivers of the deluge, into their present numbers by slow and varying gradations and in separate populations. They have branched off from their original stocks and from each other into numerous distinct settlements or into migrating tribes, of which some have become nations more or less lasting. From the results we may infer that it was his intention that human nature should exist upon the earth in this condition; and should have their various transactions with each other of amity and hostility which the annals of each nation record. It is clear, from what has taken place, that no irresistible, or unchangeable, or ungoverned law of population has ever operated or displayed itself in any part, and never in the geometrical ratio; but that, in all ages and nations, the multiplication of mankind has been permitted or conducted under special laws and to special results, peculiar, not to each territorial region, but to each aggregation of human society that has spread and settled in its habitual locality. We perceive, from the history of each nation, that it has never been in any unceasing course or ratio of augmentation or decline, nor fixed in any stationary pause. If a stationary law had been made the permanent rule, mankind could not have multiplied from the time of its promulgation. But we perceive that they have enlarged into their present state. Therefore, no paralysis of this sort has been imposed upon them. Neither has the resistless law of any augmenting ratio, much less a Malthusian ratio, been enforced upon them, for then they would have soon overwhelmed the earth, to the incalculable, or, at least, incomprehensible numbers to which a former letter has alluded. As little has any law of decline, devastation, or misery been inflicted on human nature, for then every tribe and kingdom would have long since gone to waste, and mankind would have ceased to be a living order of beings in the universe many centuries ago. Instead of either of these laws having been made the rule and governor of human life, the system has manifestly been that all should be occasionally used-that each of them should act in the course of human life, but that the agency of each should be regulated and guided by the wisdom of their Institutor, so as to execute his plans and accomplish his purposes in his administration of human affairs, and in effectuating the ends which he has designed that every nation should promote, and which the process that he is carrying on is still operating to accomplish. On this plan the populations of Europe have been sustained; often kept stationary; and rising again by ratios never uniform, but not advancing with a measured progression.* According to these plans, he has caused some populations to grow up and decline; others to become stationary; others to advance; and all to undergo those alterations and vicissitudes which it suited his great purposes that they should experience. Population has nowhere been left absolutely to itself; he has given it room and license to vary, as human will and causes affected it, within the limits which he has, by his constitution of nature, presented to it. But within these limits his guidance and control have been always actively provident and directing. The elements of our life have been al * The slow and gradual multiplication of mankind appears in the fact mentioned in the periodical papers of the day which have just come before me, January, 1837. The "Moniteur" contains a table of the population of FRANCE for 1836, which is stated at 33,540,908, being an increase since the last census in 1831, mentioned before, p. 72, to have been 32,560,934, of 9974. Thus one of the most civilized nations of Europe, in full peace and prosperity, has increased less than a thirty-third part in five years; consequently, at this rate, would not be doubled in a hundred and fifty years, supposing that the same augmentation continued undiminished for all that period. ways under his superintendence, and have always taken the course which his purposes have required. Hence every nation exhibits a special and peculiar series of result, both as to its coexisting numbers and its social state. Those which once flourished have at length disappeared, as his plans appointed; and those which are now prominent have arisen into their present multitudes and history by no fixed law or ratio whatever, but by those graduations, suspensions, alternations, and successions which each displays to the observing judg ment.* The Divine plans as to each particular population must be sought and studied in its particular history; and with the lights afforded by this, in the bearings and connexion of it on the transactions and states of the other nations with which it has been concerned; extending, likewise, the observation to the condition and course of the rest of the contemporary world, and of the future events which it has more remotely contributed to effect; for the plans and agencies of Providence are framed on a large scale, and with long, and expansive, and numerous consequences, * About 200 years ago, Olaus Rudbeck, in his "Atlantica," boasted of the prolific nature of his Swedish countrywomen. He thought this to be one of the distinguishing natural advantages which Sweden was enjoying; yet not withstanding the fact, of which he gives instances, no unusual increase has multiplied the population of Sweden. On the contrary, we see in the following series the same gradual increase which seems to have been the most general law in Europe during the last century, and which confirms the view we have taken of the real laws of population and their natural results. The Col. Carl. af Forsell, in his "Statistik von Schweden," presents this statement to us, valuable for the length and continuity of the series, being eighty years :In 1751 the population amounted to 1760 1772 1780 1785 1790 1795 1800 1805 1810 1815 1820 1825 1830 1,785,727 2,012,772 2,118,281 2,142,273 2,150,493 2,280,441 2,347,303 2,412,772 2,377,851 2,465,066 2,584,690 2,771,252 2,888,082 At this rate, Sweden would be 100 years in doubling its population, If it continued in a similar augmentation. |