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 is 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 society 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.

Thus increasing population increases the activities of every part of society; and no one can deny that, if the added numbers find enough to eat, they do good to all by their other necessities. The more they want the more they benefit; for all the arts, trades, professions, and manufactures seek for business and demands. The more orders arrive the happier and more thriving they are. It is for their fellow-creatures that they work, and by the use which others make of their productions that they live. They send their goods abroad only because they weave and work more than is wanted at home; but if the domestic demand enlarges, as from additional numbers it always must, their profits are greater, and the remuneration more immediate, and their trouble of the exportation avoided. Thus augmented population stimulates the industry, increases the ingenuity, and augments the property of the country, and causes the working families to be more employed, more comfortable, and more contented. Every man wants as much as he could make himself. The newborn being, therefore, never brings into society hands to be idle or indolence to be maintained. The necessaries he requires others must supply; but he must also exert an adequate degree of his own labour for their benefit in order to procure them. Hence no additional population is a burden on any one. The existing work for the new arriving, and these for them. It cannot be otherwise. We do not pass the newborn into an island to stroll and slumber while the rest maintain them. They shoot up among us, and mingle with us in all our business and activities; and the young, as they mature, contribute as much to support and benefit their elders as they have been benefited by them. But if the population languish, arts, industry, production, and comfort lessen and languish too. There cannot be more of these than there are individuals to exercise them and to give them employment.

Thus far I see no reason to question the advantages of an enlarging population, viewing them in the lowest and most material form, and in their national effects; but other considerations open before us, and present to us benefits which enlarging numbers occasion to their age, to themselves, and to human nature itself.

The talent, the energies, the inventive skill; new discoveries of the utilities of natural substances; new thoughts and modes of applying these properties to the productions of new

commodities, or to the multiplication of former ones; the creative activities of the human mind, and the now more abundant, more diversified, and more universally diffused conveniences of life have in every country increased with their increasing populations, and most signally in our own. The more people appear in our country, the more we invent, fabricate, possess, and enjoy. Our comforts have augmented with our numbers, and ever will and must do so, because they are the makers of all; the more comers the more makers, and the more consumers too; every newborn person is sure to be a new customer, for every birth multiplies the hands that are to make, the minds that are to devise, and the bodies that want supply; but all who want must provide themselves with what they need, and must therefore make it, or do what will induce other makers to give them what they require. No one can live without the necessaries of life, and no one be stows them gratis on another in the general course of things. We exact of each other that every one shall exert his own powers to provide his own maintenance; and this can be only effected by doing something that will be serviceable to others, and that will induce them to exchange for it what will be useful to themselves. Hence the more people that arise the more of the necessaries and conveniences of life must be made; for if, as in wilder countries, others will not provide them for us, every one of us must make more for ourselves.

Thus the necessaries and conveniences of life in any country, that is, its property and wealth (for these constitute its substantial wealth), must increase with its population. The greater number need more than the less, and cannot exist if they have not the due supply. Production, therefore, must and does invariably multiply with population. Its quantity depends upon their augmentation, and arises from it, and cannot fail to do so unless mankind cease to want and desire. They must have the amount enlarged as they enlarge. Hunger, cold, and rain, desires, active limbs, love of action, the sight of pleasurable things about them which others have acquired, the wish for enjoyment, and to obtain that they may enjoy, stimulate every new generation which grows up as they actuated their predecessors. And thus it is impossible for a population to increase without productive activity, and produce of all sorts multiplying in a country. We may truly deem it impossible to be otherwise; for it is naturally impos

sible for the newborn to go and place themselves on the banks of our high roads, or in the suburbs of our cities, and contentedly die away in famine, because they will do nothing for themselves to obtain what they need, but resolve to perish in sloth and idleness, unless robins or ravens will bring them food without their own exertions and inquiry. This, I say, is an impossibility, for the natural appetites will not let them act thus; these stimulate, and every new individual of the enlarging numbers seeks as heartily to provide himself with his necessaries and comforts as any of those who were existing before he was born.

But where the population is small, the productions and property of the country are in a diminished state. If population stops, they never increase. Poverty or scanty circumstances, and fewer conveniences, are the companions of small societies, as wealth and abundance are of all multiplying communities-always wealth to them, as compared with their preceding state, and wealth enlarging, as to its comparison with others, as they multiply and learn how to gain or make what they desire. I admit that happiness is independent of riches and abundance, and may be always enjoyed without them. But if nations deem an affluence of all that human ingenuity can make or use a distinction and an advantage, they will possess these more largely as their inhabitants multiply and industriously employ themselves.

New population ensures likewise new kinds of produce of all such, as well as greater exuberance; for as it comes up into a society where all former branches of industry are well filled, the younger must either wait till the older die off in order to take their place, or must think and contrive for themselves some additions to the utilities or pleasures of their fellow-men, in order to have the employment and the profit they desire. New men have new ideas, and strike out new paths, and seek to be distinguished by their novelties; and because they are new men, in new circumstances, and with new habits, they think new thoughts, they discern new things, they form new imaginations, and devise new productions of some sort or other, and can no more help doing so than they can avoid sleeping, dreaming, awaking, or exercising any of the functions of their frame.

Hence, as populations enlarge, the inventive powers of human nature are stimulated to new conceptions, and new acVOL. III.-O