existing numbers, and varies with every variation of the latter. Equally certain is it, that, in each of the periods I have been alluding to, superiority in condition has still accompanied that district which has become the most numerously peopled. This is a principle, indeed, which lies at the foundation of human society, and pervades the whole structure even to its loftiest pinnacle. Like the infancy of human beings, is that of the communities they form, scattered, ignorant, and weak; but the Deity, who wills our happiness, and whose providence promotes it, has provided an inherent cure for these evils in the growth of their numbers as these multiply, they increase in knowledge and prosperity and power, till they wax into mighty nations; nor has there been an example of a country upon earth, in the possession of its natural advantages, where it has been otherwise.

(12.) Some observations, suggested by the last tables, I will subjoin, especially as so much is now said about the certainty of mankind doubling every five-and-twenty years, if unchecked; a supposition, by-the-bye, which I have elsewhere demonstrated to be impossible, by a series of tables, constructed upon the very data of human prolificness and mortality, given by those who pronounce it to be so far within the compass of natural increase. We find, by the last table, that, even supposing the population of 1791 to be fully given, still in thirty years an increase of sixtyone only, on every hundred, had taken place; and this increase of such a nature, and so distributed, as plainly to show that even that ratio will diminish as the population condensates. Oh, but (methinks I hear the

assertors of the superfecundity of the human race exclaim) you forget the checks! What checks, I ask? Not the direct ones, as they are called, such as emigration; that has been authoritatively pronounced to be "immaterial." Not war; that has ceased. Not infanticide; that never did prevail amongst this simple people. Not those unnameable offences which naturally flow from the discountenance of matrimony, and the substitution of "moral restraint," as it is facetiously denominated: no such they have ever held in abhorrence. The preventive check has no place here; for we have it on the great authority himself, that "they propagate like brute beasts," and these, it is conceived, do not much regard it. It has, therefore, no existence whatsoever, according to their own showing; and, in proof of this, they appeal to the increase of the population there, compared with that of England. I accept this appeal. The population of Ireland has increased, in thirty years (even taking the estimate of 1791 to be complete), 61 per centum: the increase in the population of England, for a like term, supposing it to augment from 1821 to 1831, as it has done from 1811 to 1821, will amount to 55 per centum. In other words, every hundred individuals in England will, in the course of those thirty years, have multiplied into 155, as in Ireland they have into 161; a difference, on the whole, of about 3 per cent., to be distributed through the space of thirty years; a difference sufficient, indeed, to establish the principle for which I contend, connected with other circumstances, but hardly amounting, I think, to an apology for all the hard speeches which have been uttered against the population of

Ireland, or the harder propositions which are made about repressing it, which now insult the feelings of the empire, and which, thank God, manifest as much ignorance of the rules of arithmetic, as they do of the laws of nature.-Again, if we still go back four-andtwenty years, which we are enabled to do by the same official documents, those of the hearth-money collectors, we find the population of the year 1767 amounting to 2,544,276; in 1791, on the same authority (and consequently, for the purposes of comparison, more satisfactory than any other), it was, as has been seen, 4,206,612. But this is an increase of above 65 per centum, and in 24 years only, instead of 61, that which took place during the latter 30 years. Before this period, the increase, resting principally upon private documents, does not appear to have been so rapid; which is perfectly consistent with my views of the effect of those vast emigrations then going on, in comparison with the number of the inhabitants; and likewise those sweeping mortalities and famines which formerly afflicted Ireland so deeply. For the last half century, however, the ratio of the increase in Ireland, notwithstanding the panic which has seized our anti-populationists, has been a greatly diminishing one; fully confirming, therefore, the preceding principle.

(13.) And I must further observe, that this increase in Ireland (small as it is, compared with that duplication, every five-and-twenty years, for which our theorists absurdly contend, making sixteen times as many people at the termination of every century as there were at its commencement) is not likely to be

continued: the same cause, pointed out elsewhere, in reference to England, which has occurred since 1801, and given a sudden and extraordinary advance to the population there, namely, the introduction of vaccination, having operated on that of Ireland, during the same term. Allowing the small-pox to have been the severe scourge represented, it must be quite obvious to the simplest arithmetician, that the relative increase cannot be continued, excepting some other discovery, equally efficient in the preservation of human life should be again made, which is not very likely, nor, indeed, possible; for there is no remaining disease so fatal to it, as the one thus extirpated. In comparing the population of 1801, thinned as it was by this pest, and that of 1821, which is freed from it, we must certainly find a much larger relative increase, than can possibly occur between 1821 and 1841, other things remaining the same. Precisely the same reasoning applies, though not in an equal degree, to the effect which the great improvement in longevity throughout Europe must have had in accumulating a larger co-existing population from the same number of births, than could have been the case before it took place. This consideration, also, ought to warn us against taking the ratio of increase generated by a comparison of two periods, so dissimilar in particulars most essential to the calculation: nothing but a continual increase in the duration of human life, so as to realize the reveries of one of the French philosophers, who imagined that man might at length survive mortality, could justify such computations. I see Mr. Finlayson calculates (erroneously, I think) the

increase in the mean duration of life at full onethird; but as this improvement includes the effect of vaccination, its ratio cannot possibly continue. Enough has been said, to show that the relative increase which has taken place, both in England and Ireland, and, indeed, throughout Europe, during the present century, will not probably be maintained; at all events, that, as yet, we are totally unauthorised to calculate upon such a result. In estimating, therefore, the future ratio of increase from that which has taken place between 1801 and 1821, we are comparing cases which are not parallel; nothing could be so absurd as such a calculation, if transferred to mechanical philosophy; even in logic it would instantly be rejected as one of the most palpable fallacies, as urging a non tali pro tali; and still the political sophists of Europe, one and all, confidently calculate the future ratio of human increase by this necessarily fallacious method.

I might add greatly to the force of the preceding observations, by proving that the census of 1801, which is made the radix of these erroneous calculations, was grossly deficient; but the proof of this important fact is reserved for a further opportunity.

(14.) Mr. Malthus, indeed, shortly after the introduction of vaccination, asserted, that either the proportion of marriages must diminish, or that some other "drain," as, I think, he terms it, of mortality must be opened; rendering, in my humble opinion, had his prognostications been true, vaccination a very doubtful blessing; but directly the contrary is, happily, the fact: health has greatly improved, and