Ton enumeration of our national blessings as exempted from earthquakes, pestilence, famine, and the horrors of war, Mr. Andrews subjoins a view of those benefits which we derive from navigation, the " good estate, wholesome government, maintenance, and increase" of which is the object of the Corporation of the Trinity Brethren; who are complimented by the preacher for their loyalty, skill, and intrepidity.

CORRESPONDENCE.

To the MONTHLY REVIEWERS.

'WH HILE the sagacious John Wagstaffe of Norwich, a member of the society of friends,' (by inheritance!) has discovered in Fragments, (Rev. Sept. p. 33.) that their author is not a member, ye are perhaps hardly chargeable with any want of acumen, in the fact escaping your notice.

The fact is that while there are many members of the associations of the 'friends' who set at nought all the peculiarities of Quakers, and are not at all regarded as Quakers by Society at large, till they declare themselves such, exciting the remark' I should not have known it if he had not told me;' there are Quakers who are, every where, recognised as such, except in the associations.

Verily, the remark applies to many zealons Non-associated Quakers which I heard a member of the society of friends' apply to an individual who had sought to be associated.- Uncle! I have been thinking that the reason why John is not received by our friends is this-they are afraid of him.-Like as when Big Sam [late porter at Carlton House] first went to enlist, they would not take him. What! said the officers; if we let him into the ranks, he will spoil the appearance of our grenadiers, who will all look diminutive beside him.-John is too much the Quaker for our Society.'-In Ireland, particularly, there are many who are, by far, too much Quakers for the Yearly Meeting of London.

Salisbury Square, 1, xj, 1803.'

We must decliné any farther communication on this subject,

J. W.

In acknowlegement of the very polite letter from the author of Three Discourses to the Library Society at Chichester," (see Rev. for last month,) we have to observe that we endeavoured to state correctly the general impression made by his essay on taste; and that to have reported his reasons for his opinion, together with ours for differing from him, would have led us farther than we were able to accompany him. It is also a subject on which it is much easier to differ than to decide, for where is the standard of taste, except the self-erected standard in every man's mind?-With regard to the quo tation from Lucretius, the author says that the passage from Thomson which we suggested would not have suited his purpose on that occasion, which was merely to adduce forms of poetical expression for a sentence in prose of general import, to which the lines from Thomson are too particular to be applicable.'. It still appears to us, however, that so beautiful an amplification, as that which these lines furnish, might with propriety have been introduced.

In the last Rev. p. 143. 1.g. for cautious,' r. cautions. P. 158. 1. 28. after and,' insert with. P. 215. 1. 25. after gratitude," dele of.

See CORRESPONDENCE in M. R. for October.

THE

MONTHLY REVIEW,

For DECEMBER, 1803.

ART. I. An Essay on the Principle of Population, or a View of its past and present Effects on Human Happiness; with an Enquiry into our Prospects respecting the future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils which it occasions. A new Edition, very much enlarged. By T. R. Malthus, A. M., Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. 4to. pp. 610. 11. 118. 6d. Boards. Johnson. 1803.

TH

HE fearless spirit of investigation, the inflexible adherence to truth, the sober and liberal turn of mind, and the able manner of discussing nice and intricate points, which were so conspicuous in the Essay on the Principle of Population, induced us to speak of it, on its first appearance, in the language of warm commendation*; and they equally characterize this production of Mr. Malthus, who now avows himself as its author, in its more finished and systematic form. The principles and views on which it proceeds remain unchanged: but so material are the alterations in its plan and structure, that they intitle it to be considered as a distinct work; and in the shape in which it now presents itself, it stands very much disentangled from the visionary philosophy which it was its primary object to expose: for if at first it only professed to be a refu tation of a false hypothesis, it now seeks the same end by exhibiting itself in the more dignified garb of a new and opposite system. As the subject which it embraces is, in many of its parts, of high importance, and of not less novelty, we feel ourselves required to bestow on it more than ordinary atten

tion.

It was an observation of Dr. Franklin, that, on any new discovery being published, the jealousy of philosophers led them first to question its reality; and then, when that point could no longer be disputed, to endeavour to find a prior author, to whom it might be ascribed. Mr. Malthu's must not be surprized if his claims, in the same way, should experience the common fate. If, however, the proposition that population *See Rev. Vol. xxvii. N. S. p. 1. Z

VOL. XLII.

must

must be kept down to the level of subsistence was too obvious to be matter of discovery at this time of day, yet to treat of ic professedly, and to follow it to all its consequences,-consequences truly momentous, and never before contemplated,-was a novel course, which it was the good fortune of Mr. Malthus first to tread. For him it was reserved to determine the proportion between the increase of population and that of food, and to ascertain the various modes by which, in different countries and ages, the balance between both has been maintained; to find in it a medium, which exhibits under new aspects the laws and manners of nations; and to establish a test by which to try institutions of the most weighty public concern. He was destined to introduce, by these systems, the light of day into many parts of political economy, and of political arithmetic; to render it a ground furnishing new questions of vast importance to society, to civil government, and to domestic happiness; to make it the means of causing the history of every country, antient and modern, to be perused with new interest; and by its application, to shew the fallacy of captivating theories, and to correct important errors in legislation and the administration of government:-errors sanctioned by such high names as those of Montesquieu, Hume, Smith, Price, and Robertson.

Perceiving that equality between the population of a country, and the means of subsistence furnished by its territory, is a law of nature, Mr. M. observes that it follows that the sole method of increasing the former is to render the latter more plentiful. He shews also that in regions the most unfavourable, in climates the most ungenial, and among tribes the most rude, the one will press on the limits of the other; that population requires no incitement beyond adequate subsistence; that to attempt to increase it in any other way is not only ineffectual, but highly pernicious; and that, the quantum of the means of subsistence remaining the same, to multiply marriages, and to render births more numerous, would be to accumulate misery, to increase mortality, and to subject the miserable race to the fatal inroads of disease and famine. He therefore cannot regard celibacy, in a certain degree, as a political evil, nor hold that late and less frequent marriages are injurious to the wellbeing of society; and consequently he cannot deem that policy, which has been known to favour the one and the other, liable to unqualified censure.

We should not wonder if a system, which originated, we are convinced, in an upright and enlightened mind, and whichis now submitted to the public with the best intentions and purest views, should call forth clamour, and subject its author to controversy. The censorious may say, and the superficial

may

may be induced to believe, that it exhibits qualities resembling those which have cast odium on the hypotheses of Hobbes and Mandeville; that it has a direct tendency to deaden our choicest sympathies, to extinguish our most refined sentiments, and to, damp our most pleasurable aspirations; that it furnishes apologies for the most inhuman practices, and, by implication, countenances institutions hitherto deemed not less impolitic than monstrous; and that it lessens our sorrow on the view of those calamities which sweep away the species, and our horror at usages which are destructive of human life. It should, however, be the object of every honest and considerate inquirer, to discover whether this theory is founded in truth; to ascertain what are the practical hints, and the useful lessons which it furnishes; and to set himself on his guard against the ill effects to which its abuse, or misconceptions with regard to it, may give rise.

The author thus states the propositions on which he builds his system:

1. Population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence. 2. Population invariably increases, where the means of subsistence increase, unless prevented by some very powerful and obvious checks. 3. These checks, and the checks which repress the superior power of population, and keep its effects on a level with the means o subsistence, are all resolvable into moral restraint, vice, and misery.

6

The first of these propositions scarcely needs illustration. The second and third will be sufficiently established by a review of the past and present state of society.'

He afterward denominates moral restraint, the preventive check on population; and vice and misery, the positive. The review of these points occupies the greater half of the volume, and includes the cases of the savage nations, of those who at present inhabit Asia and Africa, of the antient Greeks and Mr. Romans, and of several of the states of modern Europe. M. shews that the difference between the power of population in man, and the power of the earth in producing sustenance, is the difference between a geometrical and an arithmetical series; as it is found that each generation of man, when not under the influence of any check on population, doubles its own numbers, while the produce of the earth, under the highest degree of cultivation in any determinate period, only increases by the repeated addition of a fixed quantity. The excess of this power of population creates the preventive check to its progress, namely, moral restraint; or calls forth the operation of the positive, viz. vice and misery. In New Holland, the singularly brutal treatment of the women, the impossibility of rearing many children, the profligacy of manners, wars, secret murders,

Z 2

highly

highly fatal epidemics, and the recurrence of famine, keep down the population; which is, however, so much on a lever with the miserable food to which these ill-fated beings are habituated, that when any event occasions a deficiency of the usual quantity, scarcity and distress ensue.

It is a very just remark of the author, with regard to Savages, that, from their extreme ignorance, the dirt of their persons, and the closeness and filth of their cabins, they lose the advantage which usually attends a thinly peopled country, that of being more exempt from pestilential diseases than those which are fully inhabited; and equally well founded is that which is supported in the following passage:

It is not, therefore, as Lord Kaimes imagines, that the American tribes have never increased sufficiently to render the pastoral or agricultural state necessary to them; but, from some cause or other, they have not adopted in any great degree these more plentiful modes of procuring subsistence, and therefore cannot have increased so as to become populous. If hunger alone could have prompted the savage tribes of America to such a change in their habits, I do not conceive that there would have been a single nation of hunters and fishers remaining; but it is evident, that some fortunate train of circumstances, in addition to this stimulus, is necessary for this purpose; and it is undoubtedly probable, that these arts of obtaining food will be first invented and improved in those spots that are best suited to them, and where the natural fertility of the situation, by allowing a greater number of people to subsist together, would give the fairest chance to the inventive powers of the human mind.'

Foreseeing an objection which may be raised to his theory, Mr. Malthus observes:

• The very extraordinary depopulation that has taken place among the American Indians, may appear to some to contradict the theory which is intended to be established; but it will be found that the causes of this rapid diminution may all be resolved into the three great checks to population that have been stated; and it is not asserted, that these checks, operating from particular circumstances with unusual force, may not in some instances be more powerful even than the principle of increase.

The insatiable fondness of the Indians for spirituous liquors, which, according to Charlevoix, is a rage that passes all expression, by producing among them perpetual quarrels and contests, which, often terminate fatally, by exposing them to a new train of disorders which their mode of life unfits them to contend with, and, by deadening and destroying the generative faculty in its very source, may alone be considered as a vice adequate to produce the present depopulation. In addition to this, it should be observed, that almost every where the connexion of the Indians with Europeans, has tended to break their spirit, to weaken or to give a wrong direction to their industry, and in consequence to diminish the sources of subsistence. In St. Do