populations reading the same books, and speaking the same language with himself, and having institutions corresponding in a great degree with those of his native land. Among them, there was found an outlet for surplus population, and the more that such was proven to be the case, the more entire became the recklessness of both the sexes in contracting the marriage tie-all feeling of duty to themselves and to their children, disappearing in the same gulf in which had already disappeared their hopes for either the present or the future.*

Centralization, and especially trading centralization, tends to the production of inequality of condition, and hence it is, that the annihilation of Irish and Indian manufactures has contributed so largely to produce the consolidation of British land.

§ 6. Coming now to the home of the over-population theory, we find in England, a country from which, as the reader has already seen, the small proprietors have almost disappearedthe 200,000 land-owners of eighty years since, being now represented by less than 35,000. At that date, the population was 7,500,000-having increased but 10 per cent. in the long period of 75 years. Now, it is estimated, for 1855, at 18,786,914having increased 150 per cent. in a period but very little longer. Growth of numbers has, therefore, kept pace with a consolidation of the land, that places one class above, and another below, the reach of hope a state of things tending, more than any other, to reduce the human animal to the condition of a mere instrument to be used by trade.

Consolidation driving the laborers from cultivation of the soil, while improved machinery was expelling them from the factory, the poor were thus made poorer and weaker, as the rich grew

*How this has operated upon the condition of the people of Great Britain, is thus exhibited by the London Times:

"For a whole generation, man has been a drug in this country, and population a nuisance. It has scarcely entered into the heads of economists, that they would ever have to deal with a deficiency of labor. The inexhaustible Irish supply has kept down the price of English labor, whether in the field, the railway, the factory, the army, or the navy; whether at the sickle, the spade, the hod, or the desk. We believe that, for fifty years at least, labor, taking its quality into account, has been cheaper in this country than in any part of Europe; and that this cheapness of labor has contributed vastly to the improvement and power of the country, to the success of all mercantile pursuits, and to the enjoyment of those who have money to spend."

richer and stronger. Ireland, too, contributed largely to the same result. As the Act of Union gradually closed her factories. and forced her people to cultivation as the sole means of supporting life, they found themselves, like the Italians of olden time, forced to emigrate to the place where taxes were distributed, in the hope of obtaining wages-their competition, of course, throwing the English laborer still more upon the "tender mercies" of the capitalist. From year to year, the small proprietor was seen to pass into the condition of a day-laborer, and the small employing mechanic or tradesman to pass into a receiver of wages the whole people, thus, tending towards becoming divided into two great classes, separated from each other by an impassable gulf, the very rich and the very poor, the master and the slave.*

As England became more flooded with the wretched people of the sister island, driven from home in search of employment, the wealthy found it more easy to accomplish "the great works" for which the country has been indebted to the "cheap labor of Ireland," and the greater the influx of such labor, the more rapid was the decline in the power of both Ireland and Britain to furnish a market for the products of the manufacturing labor of England. Hence arose, of course, a necessity for looking abroad for new markets to take the place of those before obtained at home, and thus cheap labor, a consequence of the system, became, in its turn, a cause of new efforts at dispensing with and further cheapening labor. As the Irishman could no longer buy, it became necessary to expel the Hindoo from his own market. As the Highlander was expelled, it became more important to underwork the spinners and weavers of China. As the Bengalese are impoverished, there arises a necessity for filling the Punjab and Affghanistan, Burmah and Borneo, with British goods. Pauperism and recklessness lie necessarily at the root of such a system, based, as it is, upon the idea of a perpetual antagonism of interests. † The result is seen in the

*See ante, vol. i., p. 239.

"Since the same cause, the difficulty of production, raises the exchangable value of raw produce, and raises also the proportion of the landlord for rent, it is obvious, that the landlord is doubly benefited by difficulty of production. First, he obtains a greater share, and secondly, the commodity in which he is paid, is of higher value."-RICARDO: Chapter on Rent.

facts, that the condition of the agricultural population is steadily deteriorating-that, in despair of any improvement of their condition, they marry early in life, and under circumstances that are totally destructive of morality t-that infanticide prevails to a frightful extent and, that demoralization is progressing with a rapidity scarcely elsewhere to be exceeded. §

That man becomes more free, and more responsible, as the prices of raw materials and finished commodities approximate to each other the former rising and the latter falling. - is a great principle, whose truth is proved by the experience of all the nations of the world, past and present. Directly the reverse of this, however, is the doctrine lying at the foundation of British policy-cheap labor and cheap raw materials being there treated

† See ante, vol. ii., p. 492. "The accounts we receive from all parts of the country, show that these miserable cottages are crowded to an extreme, and that the crowding is progressively increasing. People of both sexes, and of all ages, both married and unmarried-parents, brothers, sisters, and strangerssleep in the same rooms, and often in the same beds. One gentleman tells us of six people of different sexes and ages, two of whom were man and wife, sleeping in the same bed, three with their heads at the top, and three with their heads at the foot of the bed. Nor are these solitary instances, but similar reports are given by gentlemen visiting in ALL parts of the country."-KAY: Social Condition of England, &c., vol. i., p. 472.

"It was declared by the coroner of Leeds, and assented to as probable by the surgeon, that there were, as near as could be calculated, about three hundred children put to death yearly in Leeds alone, that were not registered by the law. In other words, three hundred infants were murdered to avoid the consequences of their living, and these murders, as the coroner said, are never detected."-Leader.

"It has been clearly ascertained, that it is a common practice among the more degraded classes of poor in many of our towns, to enter their infants in these [burial] clubs, and then to cause their death, either by starvation, ill-usage, or poison! What more horrible symptom of moral degradation can be conceived? One's mind revolts against it, and would fain reject it as a monstrous fiction. But, alas! it seems to be but too true."-KAY: vol. i., p. 433.

Commenting on these and numerous other facts of similar kind, Mr. Kay

says:

These accounts are really almost too horrible to be believed at all; and were they not given us on the authority of such great experience and benevolence, we should totally discredit them.

"But, alas! they are only too true. There can be no doubt, that a great part of the poorer classes of this country are sunk into such a frightful depth of hopelessness, misery, and utter moral degradation, that even mothers forget their affection for their helpless little offspring, and kill them as a butcher does his lambs, in order to make money by their murder, and therewith to lessen their pauperism and misery."—Ibid, p. 446.

See ante, vol. i., p. 425.

VOL. III.-19

as the great objects of desire. In that direction lie slavery and irresponsibility, whether to God or man. To the cry of "cheap food," nevertheless, it was due, that the corn laws were repealed, and yet slight examination would have been required for obtaining evidence of the fact, that the quantity of labor required for producing food in Ireland and England was really less than that required for its mere transportation from the heart of Russia or America. The effect of the repeal was precisely such as might have been anticipated — that of almost annihilating the demand for labor in Ireland, and forcing hundreds of thousands of Irishmen to seek in England and elsewhere a market for their commodity. Increased competition for its sale in England produced, of course, a flood of emigration towards distant lands. agricultural laborers being among the first to move. For a short period, the price of food fell, to rise, however, again, and to remain at a higher point than had been known for many years-— the result being shown in the following figures representing the proportion born by deaths to population in the first five years of the last and present decades:

This is an extraordinary change, but what renders it far more 80, is that the period from 1841 to 1845 embraces years of distress more remarkable, perhaps, than any recorded in British history-years that paved the way for the repeal of the corn laws in 1846 the mass of destitution having almost exceeded belief.†

*Of the price that is paid, in England, for a bushel of corn that is raised in lowa, four-fifths are, in ordinary seasons, absorbed by the persons through whose hands it passes on its road from the producer to the consumer. With the people of the heart of Russia it must be worse, even, than this.

We could easily fill our pages with narratives of suffering which would move the hardest heart to tears; we might tell how skilled workmen, capable now of earning at the regular rate of wages paid in their trade, from 188. to 25s. a week, and withal sober, honest, and religious, were driven to subsist on mere vegetable refuse; how many a family, reduced and brokenhearted, sunk in misery from which they could not flee, wasted away to the grave, leaving one, perhaps beloved, the helpless spectator of all their sufferings, who had often bitterly cursed the hour that awoke within his bosom the fond emotions of a parent, and had found in madness a sad asylum for all his woes." DUNCKLEY: Charter of the Nations. This work is the Prize Essay on the advantages of the Free Trade in Corn, established by the passage of Sir Robert Peel's law in 1846. See also, ante, vol. i. p. 388.

The proportion borne to population by marriages and births in the two periods above referred to has been as follows:

The phenomena presented for consideration by Ireland are. being thus reproduced in England-extensive emigration being accompanied by reckless marriages, great increase of births, and corresponding increase of mortality-thus furnishing further evidence of the adaptability of the procreative tendencies to the particular circumstances in which a community is placed.

That the general tendency is towards a diminution of the duration of life, is shown by the following table representing the proportion of deaths to 10,000 persons living:

3,451

424

265

15 to 20

343

Steadiness and regularity are as much to be desired in the societary movement, as in that of a steam engine, or a watch. These obtained, there is a constant tendency toward acceleration of the circulation, with corresponding increase in the growth of

* That the growing mortality is due, in part at least, to increased intemperance, would seem to be proved by the fact, that the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, in their last report, have called attention to the large in crease in the consumption of spirits, the duties on which, in 1857-8, were no less than £9,230,963=$44,308,000; or about $1.50 per head, of the total population.