terested to read it. Dr. Anderson really discovered the Law of Rent, as you may see in Vol. 6 of The Bee, pp. 292—300.— 1791."

The information given by Mrs. Pringle, and referred to in the above letter to Mr. Robert Porter, is as follows. After referring to Mr. Ellis' teachings in the Friend of the People, written about the year 1860, she speaks of the personal appearance of her father as follows: "The likeness (photograph sent) is excellent, and to enable you to form a complete idea of his personal appearance, I must tell you that his complexion was fair, with light and curling hair, red whiskers, and bright darkish blue eyes. His height was five feet eleven inches, and a very well-formed figure." Another granddaughter of Mrs. Malthus, the mother of Thomas Robert, says that Daniel Malthus, the father, although refined, was a selfish man. His wife was devoted to him, and although not a talented woman, was accomplished, and educated her own daughter without a governess. All her children were devoted to her, especially her eldest son. Thomas Robert was, perhaps, more attached to his father; but his mother's amiability descended to him, for he was never known to say a harsh word of anyone, although more attacked than any writer has perhaps ever been. It appears that Malthus died, not of heart disease, but of bronchitis. His mother's maiden name was Graham, and she was of an old Scotch family. Here is one sentence to depict her character:-"In short, I imagine her gentle, unobtrusive, loving, romantic, and perfectly unselfish; but not the sort of person to form her sons' characters, though to attract their affections."

COMP

CHAPTER II.

AN ANALYSIS OF THE ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLE
OF POPULATION."

YOMPARATIVELY few students of Political Economy at the present day appear to read Malthus' celebrated Essay in the original. This, in our opinion, is a great mistake. That work is as readable now as it was when it attracted such wellmerited attention at the commencement of this century; and the statistics given by the learned author become even more valuable than ever, owing to the important additions made to them of recent years by the various modern writers on Social Economy.

The third edition of Malthus' essay, which appeared in 1806, is now before us: and consists of two volumes of about one thousand pages in all, of large type, full of the most interesting accounts ever given of the manners and customs of the different nations of ancient and modern tmes. The first volume is divided into two books. In Book I. there are fourteen chapters, the first of which states the Law of Population, or the tendency which population has to increase more rapidly than the means of subsistence. The second chapter treats of the general checks to population, and the way in which these operate. Then come three most interesting chapters on the checks to population among savage nations, followed by one on those obtaining among the ancient inhabitants of Northern Europe. Chapter seven gives an account of the checks existing among modern pastoral nations; and this is followed by an account of the checks in Africa, and Northern and Southern Siberia. Then follows a most interesting account of the brutal checks to population in Turkey, and the lamentable starvation checks of Hindostan and China. Book I. ends with chapters on the checks to population among the ancient Greeks and Romans.

In Book II. there is a most important account given by Mr. Malthus of the results of his extensive travels in Europe, in 1799 and after years, with details of the checks to population existing in Norway, Sweden, Russia, Germany, Switzerland, France, England, Scotland, and Ireland.

If those persons who at present think that the Malthusian law of human increase has been found by subsequent investigation to be erroneous, could only be induced to read Mr. Malthus' essay in the original, they would soon find that all these objections have been anticipated in that celebrated work, and perhaps acknowledge, with Mr. J. S. Mill and other economists, that the truth is "axiomatic," or no longer requiring discussion. In the last pamphlet, indeed, which we have seen, dedicated to one of the most deservedly popular of modern British authors, Thomas Carlyle, the writer, like Mr. Carlyle himself, speaks as if the law of Malthus had been refuted; but, as usual in such cases, it is clear that the writer has not the least idea of what the celebrated Essay on Population was written to prove.

In his first chapter, Malthus observes that Euler, a great mathematician, had calculated that, on the supposition of such a moderate amount of mortality as one in 36 (which is considerably higher than our present mortality of one in 42 in England), and with the further supposition of the births being to the deaths as three to one (a ratio which seems nearly to hold good, at present, in New Zealand), the period of doubling a population would be only 12 years; and Sir William Petty, in his work on Political Arithmetic, supposed a doubling to be possible in some ten years.

Malthus compares this tendency with the actual increase of man in such countries as China and Japan. He observes that it may fairly be doubted whether the best directed efforts of human industry could double the agricultural produce of China even once, in any number of years. The difference between the time of doubling, which has taken place of late in some twenty or thirty years, in North America, and in our Australian colonies, when compared with the slow increase of the Chinese population, gives the most complete view of the case that can be obtained.

In countries which are naturally healthy, and where the preventive check is found to prevail, too, with considerable force, the positive check, as Malthus observes, will prevail very little, and the mortality will be small; but in every country some of the checks are and will always continue to be, in constant operation so that mankind has only a choice of evils, for we cannot possibly escape from some of the population checks, which are inevitable.

In his third chapter our author reviews the population checks in the lowest stage of human society; and shows how impos

sible it is for such unfortunate peoples as the natives of the Tierra del Fuego, or of Van Diemen's Land, to increase rapidly in numbers, owing to their extreme ignorance of the laws of nature. In New Zealand, Captain Cook found the checks to population to be war, and starvation so great as to prompt to cannibalism, in a country where, as it is at present colonized by a civilized people, the deaths seem not to exceed fifteen per 1,000 annually, and population doubles in about twenty years or less, without counting immigrants.

In Mr. Malthus' day, there still existed large numbers of those unfortunate races of American Indians, which are now so rapidly disappearing in the modern "struggle for existence" with civilised Europeans. Then, as now, these tribes lived principally by hunting and fishing, most narrow modes of subsistence. The mortality of infants among such tribes was always enormous, and the Jesuit missionaries mentioned how that the Indians of South America were subject to perpetual diseases for which they knew no remedy; scarcely ever did the individuals of such tribes attain to an advanced age; and the checks to population among them were chiefly of the posi tive kind-plagues, starvation, brutal wars, and disease. The North American Indians, too, lived in such a state of filth and over-crowding in their huts, that every infectious disease carried off vast numbers. Cannibalism, according to Captain Cook, as seen in New Zealand and other islands, originated in the fearful privations experienced by such peoples when their numbers were pressing on the food supplies.

And here let us quote Malthus' own words,-"It is not 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 the purpose."

In chapter V., our author gives a curious account of how population was checked in the islands of the South Seas. It is among such islands as these (and, indeed, the British islands in ancient times resembled them greatly), that we trace the origin of many of the singular institutions destined to retard

the rapid increase of mankind-cannibalism, late marriages, the consecration of virginity, and ferocious punishments against such women as reproduce the species at too early an age. Captain Cook found such a constant state of warfare existing among the various tribes in New Zealand, that each village in its turn applied to him to assist them in destroying the others. In his third voyage he adds that warlike ferocity is so constant "that one hardly ever finds a New Zealander off his guard, either by night or day."

In Otaheite and the Society Islands, again, where the size of the islands was too small, and the knowledge of navigation acquired by the islanders too scanty to make it possible for population to increase rapidly, all sorts of sufferings were seen among the poorer classes of the people; the richer classes, however, seemed, according to Captain Cook, to check their own increase by having recourse to the fearful practice of infanticide, to an enormous and unparalleled extent. Even with these checks, however, population, in the South Sea Islands, occasionally pressed so hard on subsistence that animal food became very scarce in certain seasons, and such destructive wars ensued that Captain Vancouver, on visiting Otaheite, in 1777, and again in 1791, found that most of his friends of 1777 were dead, having been killed in the wars. Prostitution, and destruction of female infants, were extremely common in Otaheite in Captain Cook's time.

In taking a general review of that department of human society, classed under the name of savage life, the only advantage Malthus notices is the possession of a greater degree of leisure by the mass of the people, than that possessed by those of civilised countries. "There is less work to be done, and, consequently, there is less labour. When we consider the incessant toil to which the lower classes, in civilised societies, are condemned, this cannot but appear to us a striking advantage; but it is probably overbalanced by greater disadvantages."

This remark of Mr. Malthus shows us, to a certain extent, on what J. J. Rousseau founded his belief as to the superior happiness of the state of nature over the civilised. Had Rousseau read the Essay on Population, he could not, we believe, have failed to perceive that the evils of civilisation are almost solely due to the universal want of knowledge of the Population Law. The late marriages, and prostitution, so bitterly inveighed against by that author, are merely the sorrowful population checks of most modern civilised nations, that have passed into