rate of velocity, constantly doubling itself in periods of twenty-five years; or, at least, if there be any reason for restraining population, we should not expect to find it in the difficulty of procuring subsistence. You will, therefore, probably be surprised to find that Mr. Rickards not only recognizes the necessity of placing a restraint on the principle of population, but recognizes it on the express ground of the limits placed by nature on the increase of subsistence.

"Individual prudence," he says* "is the proper check to precipitate marriages; an appeal to the consequences which will recoil on the parties themselves and their innocent offspring, is the appropriate and cogent argument to deter them from rash engagements. Let it not be said," he continues, "that in thus arguing I am substituting a principle of selfishness for one of duty. It is not so: prudence is here an obligation of morality." "Whatever fluctuations," he adds, "may betide the labour market, let each man, in forming his private connections, act with the forethought and discretion that become a responsible being, and society will have no cause of complaint against him, for over-population will be impossible.' This is excellent advice. But what are the grounds of it?-why should "over-population" be possible in the absence of forethought and discretion? why should prudence in respect to marriage be an obligation of morality? Simply, Mr. Rickards tells us, quoting the language of M. Say (not to refute but to adopt it), be

* P. 204.

دو

cause

"the tendency of men to reproduce their kind, and their means of doing so are, we may say, infinite; but their means of subsistence are limited."*

I must leave Mr. Rickards to reconcile his practical lessons with his theoretical conclusions-his advocacy of a restraint on population on the ground of the limitation of subsistence, with his doctrine that subsistence "potentially" and "actually" tends to increase faster than population. It appears to me that the conclusion is inevitable-either his doctrines, in the sense in which he understands them, are irrelevant to the purposes of Political Economy; or his precepts are in direct contravention of his doctrines.

Before concluding I must notice one more position of Mr. Rickards. In the preface to the work which I have been noticing he puts this dilemma. "If the conclusion of the Essay on Population be true, it seems to me to involve this inevitable consequence-that there has been a miscalculation of means to ends in the arrangements of the universe-either man has been made too prolific, or the earth too sterile." The reply to this is plain and direct. The conclusion of Malthus certainly does involve the consequence that the earth is too sterile for the fecundity of man-for the possible increase of mankind; the earth cannot for ever yield food as fast as human beings can multiply; neither in this case, nor in any other, has provision been made for the unlimited gratification of any human propensity. Not even the most amiable instinct

* P. 186.

—not even the instinct of compassion, can be released from the control of prudence and conscience without entailing injury, and perhaps ruin, on the possessor. Whether this be a ground for charging the Creator of the universe with a "miscalculation of means to ends" it is not for me to say; but the fact, I apprehend, is indisputable. If it be an "end" of creation that the human species should multiply unrestrained (and this would seem to be Mr. Rickards' view, being implied in his dilemma) the conditions under which man has been placed in the world certainly do not seem to be well calculated for this purpose, and “the arrangements of the universe" do certainly, on this hypothesis, seem liable to the charge conveyed in the passage which I have quoted. For my part, I do not take this view of the "ends" for which "the arrangements of the universe" have been planned,—and therefore do not perceive that the sterility of the earth, as compared with the fecundity of man, casts any reflection on the wisdom of the Creator.

But whether this be so or not, it is certain that the dilemma of Mr. Rickards, such as it is, is quite as applicable to his own tenets as to those of Malthus. The doctrine of Malthus, as I have admitted, does involve the consequence that the earth is "too sterile" for the possible increase of mankind. Does Mr. Rickards deny this? If so, I am quite unable to understand the following passage. "The physical power of reproduction in the human species," says Mr. Rickards, "is such that, supposing it to operate

absolutely without check, it would in the course of a few centuries overspread with a dense mass of human beings every corner of the habitable earth. In far less time than it has taken to produce the now comparatively thin and scattered population of the globe, the fecundity of mankind must have been arrested by the failure not of subsistence only, but of space. If so, then I ask, in what sense does Mr. Rickards maintain the negative of the dilemma he has put-that neither is 66 man too prolific," nor yet "the earth too sterile"? Subsistence, he admits, cannot be increased as fast as human beings are capable of multiplying; in other words, the earth is "too sterile" for the fecundity of mankind, for the possible increase of human beings. Then in what sense does he deny that the earth is too sterile? Will he say "too sterile" for the "actual" increase of mankind? And does his point after all amount only to this, that human beings do not, in point of fact, multiply faster than subsistence can be prepared for them, and that in this sense the earth is not too sterile? Surely that is only to say that men cannot live without food-a harmless truism, with which few will be disposed to quarrel, and which, one would imagine, might be defended without resorting to so formidable a dilemma.

* P. 179.

LECTURE VI.

OF THE THEORY OF RENT.

Of those principles of Political Economy which have of late years been made the subject of controversy amongst economists, one of the most fundamental and important is the theory of rent, generally designated from the name of its ablest expounder, Mr. Ricardo. Mr. Rickards of Oxford, some of whose objections to the doctrine of population, as taught by Malthus, I considered in my last lecture, is also an opponent of Ricardo's theory of rent. In the sixth lecture of his work on Population and Capital, he remarks upon the close relation which exists between these two doctrines. "The arguments for both," he says, "rest on one and the same hypothesis". "The same

assumption—that of the diminishing productiveness of the land as compared with the undiminished power of human fecundity-forms the basis" of both theories.

Substantially I take this to be a correct statement of the grounds on which the doctrines of population and rent rest, and I am quite prepared to stake their truth upon this issue. But, before adverting further