LETTER XI.

The Populations of the World are all in different States, which imply different Laws acting in each. The three Elements of Population are Marriages, Births, and Deaths.-All linked and adjusted to each other in the Plan and System of Creation.-On the Ratio of Marriages, and of Married and Marriageable Females in various Populations.

MY DEAR SON,

Let us now endeavour to trace the real laws by which our Creator and Preserver carries on, guides, and modifies the various populations of human society.

As we cast our eyes around in the world, we see that they are everywhere existing in different states-in states so different in all their circumstances and results, that the same laws of population cannot be equally affecting them; because, as the same effects do not occur in every one alike, the same causes cannot be producing them.

Society appears to have been always in this diversified condition. Our first conclusion, therefore, is, that as the same laws cannot occasion dissimilar results, the laws of each state of population are peculiar to that state, act in it while that state lasts, and alter into others as the condition of the society changes. The human body is an instance of this mutation. The laws of its childhood act while that lasts; those of its youth then take their place, which are succeeded by those of manhood, which again give place to those of old age, if the individual lasts so long, till the law of death comes cn, and terminates the action of all the laws of life. Thus it is with the population of mankind. The laws of it, in the savage state, operate while that condition lasts; but, as that gradually changes into the civilized form of humar. life, the laws of population alter into those which have been appointed to act in the newer state of the improving society.

The same changes occur in material things. The laws of nature, which are in full action in an uncleared country, are its existing state; and that it never will be suffered to be anywhere what it ought not to be.

not those which prevail in it when its forests have been removed and its soil is in careful cultivation. This is palpable to our sight. The laws of nature, in marshy ground, cease and disappear as soon as it is drained. Those which inflicted the fever and the ague are acting no more, while those of salubrity and of nutritious vegetation occupy their place. The analogy runs through all the stages of population. Each of the zones has its several laws and several results. The laws of life and death are always essential parts of the laws of population; and, therefore, however desirous we may be to search out for one general law, we shall see sufficient reasons to perceive that populations will always be governed by the laws of their place, age, and condition. No general law supersedes or nullifies these; but these are the real operating agencies, to which our attention should, in every instance, be turned.

There are, indeed, some universal facts connected with population which may be referred to a settled anterior plan and to fixed universal laws, everywhere operating to produce them; such as the following:-Population arises only from the parental association, and always from the mother; and none can be mothers before or after particular ages. All begin life at first as babes; and these are born in that wonderful equality between the sexes which alone is sufficient to mark a planned and directing government of human nativities. To these we may add the laws, as unceasing, that all who are born shall die, and that all shall not die at the same age, but at every diversity of duration, from one hour to one hundred years. We also find it a general rule or law, that though every male may be in time a father, and every female, in due age, for a limited time, be a mother, yet all men and women do not become parents; nor does every mother that has children introduce into society the same number of them, nor is able to rear up to maturity all or the same proportion of those whom she nurtures. These circumstances are of such perpetual ubiquity, that we may call them effects of laws, operating everywhere, which have been specially appointed to produce them. To general laws of this sort, and to a few more of this kind, population is everywhere subjected; but beyond all such, the laws of it become limited, local, and particular laws, and never such a one overruling or overwhelming law as the Malthusian theory supposes. This, indeed, has a VOL. III.-H

proof of its being imaginary, in the circumstance that it has never had such a universal individual operation as it ought to have had if it had been a universal law; for every woman does not producé children in a geometrical ratio, as she ought to have done if that were a real law in nature, or in any other fixed or invariable ratio. The laws of nature are constant in their agency, and are not partial or capricious in their effects; for, whenever the effects are of this character, they indicate that no one law can be producing them.

An average is not a law. An average result is an artificial de duction from many different effects; and many different effects imply, by their differences, that they are not the consequences of one universal law; for that, in the same locality, and under the same surrounding circumstances, ought never to vary in its operations and productions: That all births shall be from women, and that women shall always be nearly one moiety of mankind, and such like events, are constant effects, marking, by their uniformity of occurrence, that they arise from fixed laws of universal force and agency. But I do not perceive one acting law of population on this character. On the contrary, the state of it, and the individual effects which constitute that state, are so varying as to imply that many causes are in operation to produce them; that their agency is complicated, though never confused, and that the results are everywhere the particular effects of many means; while the harmonies, and adaptations, and utilities which they display are continual evidences that both the causes and the conse quences are under a moral and intelligent government and adjustment of a provident wisdom and a benevolent care.

The state of every population is the complicated result of the combination and operation of three main elements, which are inseparable from it, and have always accompanied and composed it. These are MARRIAGES, BIRTHS, and DEATHS. All these are naturally linked together, and cannot be severed. All that are born are born to die; and none can be born without the connubial association. It is a verbal distinction that misleads to call one of these the law and another the check. Each has its appropriated laws, and works out by them its ap propriated and independent effects, each equally important to the other. The laws of death are of their own kind, quite distinct from those of birth, but as powerful and unceasing, and ordained to be their perpetual attendant. The laws of

The state, increase, and decline of every population are always the joint effects of the concurring agencies of all the three laws; all these co-operate to produce the elements, agencies, and materials from which it arises. It is their blended action which causes it to be as it appears, and is ever making the living results of which it is successively composed. We will briefly consider each of these elements, beginning with that of MARRIAGE.

The desire of marriage may be deemed universal, but the results of that desire are not so, because all do not marry; nor are the consequences of marriage either universal or uniform, because all that marry do not have children; and those who have issue have them with a diversity in number and in vital durability which is not at their command, but which takes place independent of their will and choice, and very frequently at variance with these. The connubial association is, therefore, manifestly under no single law, but is under the influence, and control, and deciding operation of several other laws or causes, co-operating with the desire, or opposing it, and subjecting it to these more powerful regulations.

The variable operation of the law which occasions marriages is strikingly shown by the varying effects in the different localities of the same country, and in different years in the same locality, as well as on the different individuals who prefer or decide to marry or to live single. Of the three elements, it is the only one which is left to human choice. The laws of nature as to births and deaths take their own course, and

exert their effects without the least reference to human wishes, and without, in the smallest degree, consulting them. But the laws of marriage are made subordinate to individual choice and determination. Every one who marries may or may not marry, as they please; but all must be born and die, whether they will or no. The laws of marriage have been therefore directed principally to act on the human will. The inclination to it is placed in the constitution of all. That is one of its natural laws. The possibility of it is given to every one; but, beyond that, many other laws concerning it have been ordained to be everywhere in operation. I have neither time, space, nor ability to trace and enumerate all the laws that govern marriage here; I can only mark their diversity of operation, and some of the positive limitations to which Providence has irresistibly subjected them.

If there be any one law of nature concerning marriage, it may be said to be that there shall be no one commanding law about it beyond that of the general wish. The ordainment appears to be that it shall be left always to human will, and left most generally to the free will of the individuals themselves, to modify, indulge, or restrain their natural inclination, as each finds to be most conducive at the time to his or her individual interest or comfort. Perhaps another experienced fact might be placed almost in the rank of a general law on this subject, and this is, that every particular marriage shall depend more on the choice and determination of the male sex than on that of the female. The male is everywhere the pro poser of the union, because he is the sovereign and the master of this world. It is the acquiescence or the refusal which has been attached to the female choice and determination.

The variations of human choice on this interesting subject, and the consequent diversities of the proportion and number of marriages generally in the world, may be perceived by what has occurred in our own country concerning them. Here we shall find that marriages fluctuate every year very much, both in number and in their proportion to the existing popu lation. The registered marriages in England and Wales, from 1800 to 1830, were in no year alike.* Nor was the

Mr. Rickman's accurate table thus states these marriages:

1801

1802

1803

67,288 1804

85,738

79,586

80,754