Below the first fork of the Arkansas, as it was named by Pike, they met several hunting parties of strange Indi-Floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia limant, ans, whose names even have rarely, if Omnia nos itidem depascimur aurea dicta.' ever, been heard of before, belonging to the tribes of the Arrapahoes, the Kaskayas, the Kiawas, and the Chayeunes. They are frequently, and perhaps at present, engaged in war with the Pawnees, Osages, and other tribes of whom we have some knowledge. Of

Cornwall Coin.-At the sale of Dr. Disney's collection of coins, in 1817, a fifty-five shilling piece of Oliver Cromwell, and known by the name of Oliver's Broad, sold for 1091.

A potatoe merchant, in the neigh

This day is published, THE THIRD NUMBER of the THE HISTORY of NORTH WALES. By MEDICAL RECORD, containing communica- W. CATHRALL, assisted by several Gentlemen tions, from Mons. Girard, on the use of the Vo- of Literary Distinction, Quarto, price 3s. Tuis latile Alkali in curing drunkenness; and Dr. Work will be published in l'arts, every Six view of Mr. Brodie's Introductory Lecture; Parts. Each Part will be embellished with a Weatherhead, on the Cæsarian operation; Re-Weeks, and will be completed in Twenty-one cases of dropsy cured by the Meadow Saffron, Plate; the one now published, contains an ac&c. &c. curate and well executed Engraving of Flint Castle -Part II. embellished with a View of the Town of Denbigh. Large Paper Copies may likewise be had, price 4s. 6d. Part IV. will be published in a few days.

And Weekly Review;

Forming an Analysis and General Repository of Literature, Philosophy, Science, Arts, History, the Drama, Morals, Manners, and Amusements.

This Paper is published early every Saturday Morning; and is forwarded Weekly, or in Monthly or Quarterly Parts, throughout the British Dominions.

No. 89.

LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 1821.

Review of New Books.

sons who have an influence in the di-
rection of our national concerns.

'If an author,' observes Mr. Godwin, An Inquiry concerning the Power of in the begining of the nineteenth cenIncrease in the Numbers of Man- tury of the Christian era, comes forward kind, being an Answer to Mr. Mal- to teach us a new creed, and to persuade thus's Essay on that subject. By us to abandon that which the concurrent Wm. Godwin. London, 1820. wisdom of ages had taught us, he should ONE of the most important questions aid of a few dogmatical maxims, but surely not attempt to do this by the sole which have occupied the attention of should have gone through the annals of politicians within the last five and antiquity, and have shewn us where, in twenty years, is that which relates to all famous nations and states, the evil crept the power of increase in the numbers in. The fact is completely against him. of mankind. The question itself is The fact is according to the evidence of by no means new, but its immediate all history, that population does not reimportance originated with Mr. Mal-quire the vigilance of governments to keep thus's Essay on Population. Few of our readers can stand in need of being reminded of the frightful doctrine there inculcated, and, unfortunately, too generally received, that no reform, moral or political, ought to be or can be introduced into society, on account of the prevailing tendency of mankind to increase beyond the limits of the means of subsistence; that against these limits mankind would ever be pressing hard, and that the reign of vice and misery must and would be

it down.'

Price 6d.

pears to have published his Enquiry purely in consideration of the effect which Mr. Malthus's doctrine, while uncontradicted, has had and continues to have upon our political regulations, affording, as it does, a plea for many of those oppressive measures to which our rulers are unhappily too prone.

Mr.

The ground-work of Mr. Malthus is simply this; that in the United States of North America, the population has gone on doubling itself every twenty-five years for the last century and a half, and, as Mr. Malthus states, by procreation only. From this he concludes, that mankind have the power of increasing It was sufficient, however, for Mr. at this rate, and would every where so Malthus to assert, that population increase were they not restrained by would increase if unchecked in a geo- vice and misery, whose operation is metrical ratio, while the means of sub-rendered necessary and unceasing by sistence could not possibly be increased the slow rate at which the means of more rapidly than in an arithme-subsistence can be increased. tical ratio; it was sufficient for Mr. Godwin takes up his pen to refute all Malthus to assert this, for the asser- this, but chiefly to shew that the aution to be credited by the class of thentic history of mankind in all ages The ratios of increase were taken for cipal laws with which we are acquainted persons to whom we have alluded. and in all nations, as well as the pringranted, and the rest followed of course. relative to the propagation of the huSurely one might have supposed that man species, go to prove the utter a doctrine so new and so pregnant with impossibility of such a regular and important consequences, so disgusting constant increase of population as that by its selfishness, and so appalling by of the United States by procreation its cruelty; so lamentable if true, and only. The author of the Enquiry so impious if false, would not have shews, that in ancient times, under cirfound a very hasty reception; on the cumstances the most favourable to pocontrary, that if it had not been sus-pulation that can be conceived, mantained throughout by the most irrefra- kind never did increase at any thing like. gable proofs, so that not a part should that rate, and in the first book takes an exhibit the least sign of rottenness, it enlarged view of the population of would have been promptly and utterly Europe, Asia, Africa, and South and, in taking it up, few persons, how-rejected, or at least, that it would not America. Perhaps the strongest arhave caused us to swerve, in the slight-gument against Mr. Malthus's doctrine est degree, from the old and established is afforded by the examples of Paraprinciples of charity and benevolence. guay and Sparta. We give the folbook:lowing extract from this part of the

universal and eternal. When it is considered what effect Mr. Malthus has

produced in all parliamentary and social regulations, changing the very principles of political economy; and that an important revolution in these respects must follow upon his total discomfiture, the importance of the volume before us will be easily conceived. It is from the pen of one of the first moral philosophers of this age,

ever satisfied of the impossibility of their being shaken in their faith in Malthus, can doubt of receiving a considerable portion of instruction and delight from a production of the author of Political Justice.

hence, in a scientific contest like this,
Such, however, was not the case, and

no man is bound to refute that which

Our limits do not admit of our en- is not supported, any more than in law tering very fully into the question at a defendant is compelled to prove a issue, or doing justice in our extracts, negative; and an assumption like that to the book before us. But it may be which formed the basis of Mr. Malproper, though it is certainly painful to thus's doctrine might have been suffered remark, with what facility the doctrines to stand for what it was worth, or at of Mr. Malthus found their way into the best have been met by counter-asminds of a great portion of those per-sumption,-Mr. Godwin, however, ap

VOL III.

Paraguay was a settlement formed by the Jesuits, in the interior of South Ame

rica, on the banks of the Rio de la Plata.

They were shocked, as it was natural that the contagion of the world should be, at religious men, and men separated from the atrocities acted by the Spaniards in this part of the world; and they formed a strenuous resolution to endeavour by an experiment of the utmost gentleness and

D-4

The argument afforded by Paraguay is strongly borne out by that of Sparta :

was,

It was

humanity, to atone to the unhappy natives have us do, against the tendency in tined to the happiness of an immortal for the cruelties acted upon their country-mankind to increase beyond the limits existence. Our first question, and that men in other parts of the continent. They of the means of subsistence, than to regarded as a most difficult one, took for their model the history of the fear with Montesquieu that population how he was to be maintained? happy constitution of Peru, under the rule of her Incas, and the whole trans every day grows thinner, and that if not enough that he was born with the imrant subsistence is to be produced. It action will redound to their immortal it goes on at the same rate, in one thou-plements and the limbs, by which exubehonour. Their establishment began sand years more the race of man will be was not enough that there was room for many millions of human beings more about the year 1610, and the Jesuits were extinct. finally expelled from it, by authority of than now exist on the face of the earth. the King of Spain, in 1767. We were reduced, (oh, miserable slavery!) to inquire whether he was born among the easier orders of society, whether he was the son of a father who had a fair prospect of being able to support a family. We were learning fast to calumniate the system of the universe, and to believe that the first duty it required of us, was to prevent too many human beings, (that last work of God, that sole ornament and true consummation of the orb we dwell in) from being born into the

What Abbé Raynal says on the subject is so much to my purpose, that I shall do little more than transcribe it.

Lycurgus employed every means he could devise to insure a numerous and It might be expected that man-healthy population. He encouraged markind would have most extraordinarily riage, he fixed a stigma on celibacy, and multiplied themselves under a govern- he provided for the support and education ment where no individual was idle, and of the children that should be born, from none were destroyed by excessive labour; the funds of the republic. His instituwhere the nourishment was wholesome, tion continued unimpaired for the space abundant, and equally distributed to all; of five hundred years. Yet it is apparent where all were fully supplied with neces- that the state perished through the dimisary clothing; where old men, widows, nution of its numbers. During the in-world.' orphans, and the sick, were attended with terval in which Sparta makes the most a care unknown to the rest of the world; splendid figure in the page of history, it where every one married of choice and was reduced to employ various expedients without motives of interest; where a nu- for the purpose of increasing the amount merous family of children was a consola- of its citizens by extrinsic accessions. In tion without the possibility of being a the period of which Aristotle treats, the burthen; where a debauchery insepara- free inhabitants of the capital were reducd ble from idleness, and which assails equally from ten thousand to one thousand men ; the rich and the poor, never hastened the and in the reign of the latter Agis, about approach of infirmities or old age; where one hundred years later than Aristotle, they nothing occurred to excite the artificial counted no more than seven hundred citipassions or to oppose those which are conzens. These are phenomena, which I formable to nature and reason; where conceive to be utterly incompatible with the advantages of commerce were reaped any hypothesis that affirms the rapid mulwithout bringing in their train the vices tiplication of the human species.' of luxury; where abundant magazines Having taken a view of the populaand succours, mutually communicated tion of Europe, Asia, Africa, and from tribe to tribe, insured them against South America, in ancient and modern famine and the inconstancy of the seasons; where the administrators of justice times, Mr. Godwin indulges in some between man and man were never reduced deep and finely toned sentiments on to the sad necessity of condemning one the state of man and society, and individual to death, to disgrace, or to makes the following truly manly reany punishment but what was momentary; flection on some of the effects of Mr. where taxes and law suits, two of the Malthus's book:greatest sources of affliction to the human

race, were utterly unknown: such a coun-
try, I say, might have been expected to
prove the most populous on the face of

the earth. It was not so."'

For twenty years the heart of man in this island has been hardening, through the theories of Mr. Malthus. What permanent effect this may have upon the English character I know not, but I am sure it was high time that it should be stopped. We were learning, at least as many of us as studied the questions of are by political economy, and these are by no means the most despicable part of the community, to look askance and with a suspicious eye upon a human being, parA woman ticularly on a little child.

Various causes have been assigned
for the decrease in the numbers of this
establishment, none of which causes are
substantial, and Paraguay remains ac-
cordingly an incontestible proof, not
only that there is not in mankind an
abstract and certain power of increas-
ing their numbers, but that, in an walking the streets in a state of pregnancy
experiment made on a particular por-was an unavoidable subject of alarm.
tion of mankind, there has sometimes A man who was the father of a numerous
appeared to be a positive absence of family, if in the lower orders of society, was
the power of supplying even a succes- the object of our anger. We could not
look upon a human being with the eye of
sion of generations of the same nume-
rical magnitude; and, judging by facts a painter as a delicious subject of con-
templation, with the eye of a moral
rather than pursuing the consequences philosopher as a machine capable of
of an unwarranted assumption, it adorning the earth with magnificence and
seems that there is much less reason beauty, or with the eye of a divine as
to provide, as Mr. Malthus would creature with a soul to be saved, and des-

a

Mr. Godwin nexts proceeds to examine very rigidly, the authorities of Mr. Malthus, which, to say the truth, are miserably slight and insignificant, and to bring the inquirer more closely to the consideration of the principles respecting the increase or decrease of On this the numbers of mankind. subject, his reasoning, which is both lucid and profound, is illustrated by an excellent tabular digest of the Swedish accounts of population, the best documents of their kind in existence. From these, it is attempted to be shewn, and, we think, with perfect success, that the human species, abstractedly considered, has very small power of increase, and that, practically, its numbers do not increase, that nearly all the children are born that can be born; that the American increase cannot have been by procreation only. This branch of the inquiry leads to an investigation of the causes, by which the amount of the numbers of mankind is reduced or restrained. We regret, that we cannot make such extracts from this part of the volume, in which the very pith of will do the question is contained, as, ample justice to the author, but the following passages place the fallacy of Mr. Malthus's hypothesis in so clear a light, that we feel compelled to give them :

and

If Mr. Malthus's doctrine were sound, and his novelties constituted a real discovery, the history of the population of the earth would be very different from the thing that it is. But his theory sustains the common fate of every mere hypothesis ingeniously contrived to account for the phenomena around us. in some degree plausible in itself, but it will never truly tally with the facts it is brought to explain. It pays us with words, but it does not clear up a single difficulty.

It look

may

by Mr. Malthus, the reduction of the
number of those who cried out for the
means of subsistence. Why are they at
present unconscious of their happiness,
and why do they not diligently apply
themselves to increase their numbers?
I think, I may venture to say, that in no
one instance has the thing happened as
Mr. Malthus's theory requires.'

never

The population of every old country, lation of the United States of America according to Mr. Malthus, is kept down has been ascertained to have proceeded by pressing hard against the limits of the from procreation only? We would remeans of subsistence. If this were true, commend it to Mr. Malthus, if he has what would be the real state of the case in the history of all the nations of the an opportunity, to ask any intelligent earth. A periodical fluctuation. That American how many of the families of there is a change, I admit, and that nations his native country, with whom he is from time to time increase and decrease in acquainted, can trace back their anthe numbers of their people, But, the Having thus arrayed against the the-cestors for a century and a half, withcause of these changes has never yet ories of Mr. Malthus, whatever know. out finding them on this side of the been fully explained; and least of all do they square with Mr. Malthus's hypothe-ledge on this subject the authentic his- Atlantic. Mr. Godwin has, however, sis. To proceed in the statement and tory of population in past and present with most exemplary diligence and his refutation of the views exhibited in the times affords, together with a very pow-usual acuteness, proceeded farther with Essay on Population: Every country, as erful train of close reasoning on the this inquiry, and, in our opinion, perwell as North America, in the proportion principles which relate to this part of fectly succeeded in establishing the fact of its area and its soil, is capable of sub-the moral system of the world, Mr. from the documents which form the sisting a given number of its inhabitants; Godwin enters directly on the subject only true means of judging of the state when this capacity has been used, and the of the alleged increase of the United of any given population, that the same country has been replenished with men, States of North America, from which laws regulate the progress of the huthat district, a portion of the globe, will refuse to receive a greater number. But, alleged increase alone, Mr. Malthus man species in North America, as ap‐ it is perhaps the nature of every check or drew his portentous and calamitous ply to it in every other part of the reaction to operate somewhat beyond the doctrine of the geometrical ratio. We world, and that the principle of proextent of the impulse that gave it birth. must confess, that we do not look upon creation operates there with precisely the Hence, we will say, comes the depopula- this division of the book as the most same effect as it does every where else. tion which forms so memorable a portion important, because, had we The fifth book, which treats of the of the records of universal history. That heard of the United States of America present state of the globe, as it relates we may not fall into the error, so incident to the limited faculties of man, of conas a place peopled entirely, and at va- to human subsistence, and the sixth, founding ourselves amidst the complicarious times, literally from year to year, on the moral and political maxims intion of very large numbers, let us take by settlers from Europe, as a portion culcated in the Essay on Population, a district, or island fully competent to of the globe, which was looked to at all though engaging in themselves, and the subsistence of one thousand human times, and more particularly within the highly valuable for the enlarged views inhabitants. The power of procreation, last fifty years, by the discontented, which they contain of the state of sowe will assume, continually tends to in- the unhappy, and the destitute of every ciety and its possible improvement, are crease the numbers of mankind. The kingdom of Europe, as the land of pro- by no means essential to the determipopulation of this district, therefore, mise, the last retreat of independence, nation of the grand question; for, having arrived at one thousand, has an abstract tendency to extend itself further. the happy soil on which they might with respect to the one, Mr. Malthus But here it is stopped by the most pow- dwell and be at peace, we should have never professed to do more than assume erful of all causes. Calamity invades been perfectly satisfied, before our ar- the arithmetical ratio to be the ratio of this devoted race of men, poverty, ex-rival at this part of the Enquiry, of the increase of the means of subsistence, amples of terrible distress, and the want absolute impossibility of such an in- and, with respect to the other, the corof the means of subsistence. Hereupon, crease, as a doubling every twenty-five rection of the fundamental mischiefs follows, we will suppose, depopulation. No man need look far for the most im-years, for a century and a half, having of Mr. Malthus's book was, we should pressive examples of depopulation. We been produced by the principle of pro- have thought, a sufficiently useful ocwill imagine the number of inhabitants To satisfy, however, such cupation to satisfy the beneficent yearnreduced to five hundred. What will be persons as desire to see that proved to ings of the author of the Enquiry. the consequence of this? The area and be false, which it has already been that as it may, we cannot but be pleased the soil were fully competent to subsist proved cannot be true, this division of with the reflections contained in the twice that number. Strips and acres of the book is, we think, perfectly com- last book. The Essay on Population land now seem to call loudly for the hand petent. Mr. Godwin gives a history was first suggested by a paper in Mr. of the cultivator. The whole country of emigration from Europe to North Godwin's Enquirer, and Mr. Malthus, pines, and is sick for the ploughshare and America, in the seventeenth century, in a subsequent edition of his Essay, the spade. Nothing, therefore, is more and likewise from 1700 to the present expressly declared the motive to his evident upon Mr. Malthus's scheme, than that this region will speedily recover time, beginning with the Brownists publication to be, that he really thought its lost population. Want of the means and Puritans, flying from the intole- that there should be somewhere on of subsistence, put it down; that want be- rance of James the First, to the radicals record an answer to systems of equality ing removed, the principle of increase (if that term is meant to be used in so founded on the principle of populainherent in the human species will raise it comprehensive a sense) who are escap- tion.' On this account, Mr. Godwin ing from the taxation and restrictions of seems to feel it peculiarly incumbent the reign of George the Fourth. Now, on him to refute every part of the the without proceeding further with this ory of Mr. Malthus which appears to part of the question, can any person, be opposed to the improvement and except Mr. Malthus, who casts his eye happiness of mankind, and to furnish over the history of Europe for the last an antidote to the poison of the appearcentury and a half, have the hardihood ance of which he has innocently been to assert that the increase in the popu- the cause,

up again.

*

But is this really the case in the history of the earth? Let us look through all the depopulated countries enumerated by Montesquieu. They have been amply blessed in the remedy prescribed Italy, Sicily, Greece, Spain, France, the whole North of Europe, Turkey, America, Asia Minor, Persia, Egypt, &c. &c.'

creation.

Be