We will, therefore,
present them with a few instances of the skill and fairness which he
shows when he undertakes to pull down the theories of other men.
present them with a few instances of the skill and fairness which he
shows when he undertakes to pull down the theories of other men.
Macaulay
"Mistaken!
" said the missionary.
"It is an indisputable fact.
My faith upon it! My life upon it! " The good man had heard the fact
asserted by his nurse when he was a child,--had always considered it as
a strong confirmation of the Scriptures, and fully believed it without
having ever thought of verifying it. The king ordered a man and woman,
the leanest that could be found, to be brought before him, and desired
his spiritual instructor to count their ribs. The father counted over
and over, upward and downward, and still found the same number in both.
He then cleared his throat, stammered, stuttered, and began to assure
the king that though he had committed a little error in saying that a
woman had more ribs than a man, he was quite right in saying that the
first woman was made out of the rib of the first man. "How can I tell
that? " said the king. "You come to me with a strange story which you say
is revealed to you from heaven. I have already made you confess that
one half of it is a lie: and how can you have the face to expect that I
shall believe the other half? "
We have shown that Mr Sadler's theory, if it be true, is as much a
theory of superfecundity as that of Mr Malthus. But it is not true. And
from Mr Sadler's own tables we will prove that it is not true.
The fecundity of the human race in England Mr Sadler rates as follows:--
"Where the inhabitants are found to be on the square mile--
From To Counties Number of births per 100 marriages
50 100 2 420
100 150 9 396
150 200 16 390
200 250 4 388
250 300 5 378
300 350 3 353
500 600 2 331
4000 and upwards 1 246
Having given this table, he begins, as usual, to boast and triumph.
"Were there not another document on the subject in existence," says he,
"the facts thus deduced from the census of England are sufficient to
demonstrate the position, that the fecundity of human beings varies
inversely as their numbers. " In no case would these facts demonstrate
that the fecundity of human beings varies inversely as their numbers
in the right sense of the words inverse variation. But certainly
they would, "if there were no other document in existence," appear
to indicate something like what Mr Sadler means by inverse variation.
Unhappily for him, however, there are other documents in existence; and
he has himself furnished us with them. We will extract another of his
tables:--
TABLE LXIV.
Showing the Operation of the Law of Population in the different Hundreds
of the County of Lancaster.
(In the following table the name of the Hundred is followed in order by:
Population on each Square Mile.
Square Miles.
Population in 1821, exclusive of Towns of separate Jurisdiction.
Marriages from 1811 to 1821.
Baptisms from 1811 to 1821.
Baptisms to 100 Marriages. )
Lonsdale : 96 : 441 : 42,486 : 3,651 : 16,129 : 442
Almondness : 267 : 228 : 60,930 : 3,670 : 15,228 : 415
Leyland : 354 : 126 : 44,583 : 2,858 : 11,182 : 391
West Derby : 409 : 377 : 154,040 : 24,182 : 86,407 : 357
Blackburn : 513 : 286 : 146,608 : 10,814 : 31,463 : 291
Salford : 869 : 373 : 322,592 : 40,143 : 114,941 : 286
Mr Sadler rejoices much over this table. The results, he says, have
surprised himself; and, indeed, as we shall show, they might well have
done so.
The result of his inquiries with respect to France he presents in the
following table:
"In those departments where there are to each inhabitant--
Hectares Departments Legitimate births to
every 1000 marriages
4 to 5 2 5130
3 to 4 3 4372
2 to 3 30 4250
1 to 2 44 4234
. 06 to 1 5 4146
. 06 1 2557
Then comes the shout of exaltation as regularly as the Gloria Patri
at the end of a Psalm. "Is there any possibility of gainsaying the
conclusions these facts force upon us; namely that the fecundity of
marriages is regulated by the density of the population, and inversely
to it? "
Certainly these tables, taken separately, look well for Mr Sadler's
theory. He must be a bungling gamester who cannot win when he is
suffered to pack the cards his own way. We must beg leave to shuffle
them a little; and we will venture to promise our readers that some
curious results will follow from the operation. In nine counties of
England, says Mr Sadler, in which the population is from 100 to 150
on the square mile, the births to 100 marriages are 396. He afterwards
expresses some doubt as to the accuracy of the documents from which this
estimate has been formed, and rates the number of births as high as 414.
Let him take his choice. We will allow him every advantage.
In the table which we have quoted, numbered lxiv. , he tells us that in
Almondness, where the population is 267 to the square mile, there are
415 births to 100 marriages. The population of Almondness is twice as
thick as the population of the nine counties referred to in the other
table. Yet the number of births to a marriage is greater in Almondness
than in those counties.
Once more, he tells us that in three counties, in which the population
was from 300 to 350 on the square mile, the births to 100 marriages were
353. He afterwards rates them at 375. Again we say, let him take his
choice. But from his table of the population of Lancashire it appears
that, in the hundred of Leyland, where the population is 354 to the
square mile, the number of births to 100 marriages is 391. Here again
we have the marriages becoming more fruitful as the population becomes
denser.
Let us now shuffle the censuses of England and France together. In two
English counties which contain from 50 to 100 inhabitants on the square
mile, the births to 100 marriages are, according to Mr Sadler, 420. But
in forty-four departments of France, in which there are from one to two
hecatares to each inhabitant, that is to say, in which the population is
from 125 to 250 or rather more, to the square mile, the number of births
to 100 marriages is 423 and a fraction.
Again, in five departments of France in which there is less than one
hecatare to each inhabitant, that is to say, in which the population is
more than 250 to the square mile, the number of births to 100 marriages
is 414 and a fraction. But in the four counties of England in which the
population is from 200 to 250 on the square mile, the number of births
to 100 marriages is, according to one of Mr Sadler's tables, only 388,
and by his very highest estimate no more than 402.
Mr Sadler gives us a long table of all the towns of England and Ireland,
which, he tells us, irrefragably demonstrates his principle. We assert,
and will prove, that these tables are alone sufficient to upset his
whole theory.
It is very true that, in the great towns the number of births to a
marriage appears to be smaller than in the less populous towns. But we
learn some other facts from these tables which we should be glad to know
how Mr Sadler will explain. We find that the fecundity in towns of
fewer than 3000 inhabitants is actually much greater than the average
fecundity of the kingdom, and that the fecundity in towns of between
3000 and 4000 inhabitants is at least as great as the average fecundity
of the kingdom. The average fecundity of a marriage in towns of fewer
than 3000 inhabitants is about four; in towns of between 3000 and 4000
inhabitants it is 3. 60. Now, the average fecundity of England, when it
contained only 160 inhabitants to a square mile, and when, therefore,
according to the new law of population, the fecundity must have been
greater than it now is, was only, according to Mr Sadler, 3. 66 to a
marriage. To proceed,--the fecundity of a marriage in the English towns
of between 4000 and 5000 inhabitants is stated at 3. 56. But, when
we turn to Mr Sadler's table of counties, we find the fecundity of a
marriage in Warwickshire and Staffordshire rated at only 3. 48, and in
Lancashire and Surrey at only 3. 41.
These facts disprove Mr Sadler's principle; and the fact on which he
lays so much stress--that the fecundity is less in the great towns than
in the small towns--does not tend in any degree to prove his principle.
There is not the least reason to believe that the population is more
dense, ON A GIVEN SPACE, in London or Manchester than in a town of 4000
inhabitants. But it is quite certain that the population is more dense
in a town of 4000 inhabitants than in Warwickshire or Lancashire. That
the fecundity of Manchester is less than the fecundity of Sandwich or
Guildford is a circumstance which has nothing whatever to do with Mr
Sadler's theory. But that the fecundity of Sandwich is greater than the
average fecundity of Kent,--that the fecundity of Guildford is greater
than the average fecundity of Surrey,--as from his own tables appears to
be the case,--these are facts utterly inconsistent with his theory.
We need not here examine why it is that the human race is less fruitful
in great cities than in small towns or in the open country. The fact has
long been notorious. We are inclined to attribute it to the same causes
which tend to abridge human life in great cities,--to general sickliness
and want of tone, produced by close air and sedentary employments. Thus
far, and thus far only, we agree with Mr Sadler, that, when population
is crowded together in such masses that the general health and energy of
the frame are impaired by the condensation, and by the habits attending
on the condensation, then the fecundity of the race diminishes. But this
is evidently a check of the same class with war, pestilence, and famine.
It is a check for the operation of which Mr Malthus has allowed.
That any condensation which does not affect the general health will
affect fecundity, is not only not proved--it is disproved--by Mr
Sadler's own tables.
Mr Sadler passes on to Prussia, and sums up his information respecting
that country as follows:--
(In the following table numbers appear in the order: Inhabitants on a
Square Mile, German.
Number of Provinces.
Births to 100 Marriages, 1754.
Births to 100 Marriages, 1784.
Births to 100 Marriages, Busching. )
Under 1000 : 2 : 434 : 472 : 503
1000 to 2000 : 4 : 414 : 455 : 454
2000 to 3000 : 6 : 384 : 424 : 426
3000 to 4000 : 2 : 365 : 408 : 394
After the table comes the boast as usual:
"Thus is the law of population deduced from the registers of Prussia
also: and were the argument to pause here, it is conclusive. The
results obtained from the registers of this and the preceding countries,
exhibiting, as they do most clearly, the principle of human increase,
it is utterly impossible should have been the work of chance; on the
contrary, the regularity with which the facts class themselves in
conformity with that principle, and the striking analogy which the whole
of them bear to each other, demonstrate equally the design of Nature,
and the certainty of its accomplishment. "
We are sorry to disturb Mr Sadler's complacency. But, in our opinion,
this table completely disproves his whole principle. If we read the
columns perpendicularly, indeed, they seem to be in his favour. But how
stands the case if we read horizontally? Does Mr Sadler believe that,
during the thirty years which elapsed between 1754 and 1784, the
population of Prussia had been diminishing? No fact in history is better
ascertained than that, during the long peace which followed the seven
years' war, it increased with great rapidity. Indeed, if the fecundity
were what Mr Sadler states it to have been, it must have increased with
great rapidity. Yet, the ratio of births to marriages is greater in 1784
than in 1754, and that in every province. It is, therefore, perfectly
clear that the fecundity does not diminish whenever the density of the
population increases.
We will try another of Mr Sadler's tables:
TABLE LXXXI.
Showing the Estimated Prolificness of Marriages in England at the close
of the Seventeenth Century.
(In the following table the name of the Place is followed in order by:
Number of Inhabitants.
One Annual Marriage, to.
Number of Marriages.
Children to one Marriage.
Total Number of Births.
London : 530,000 : 106 : 5,000 : 4. : 20,000
Large Towns : 870,000 : 128 : 6,800 : 4. 5 : 30,000
Small Towns and
Country Places : 4,100,000 : 141 : 29,200 : 4. 8 : 140,160
-------------------------------------------
: 5,500,000 : 134 : 41,000 : 4. 65 : 190,760
Standing by itself, this table, like most of the others, seems to
support Mr Sadler's theory. But surely London, at the close of the
seventeenth century, was far more thickly peopled than the kingdom
of England now is. Yet the fecundity in London at the close of the
seventeenth century was 4; and the average fecundity of the whole
kingdom now is not more, according to Mr Sadler, than 3 1/2. Then again,
the large towns in 1700 were far more thickly peopled than Westmoreland
and the North Riding of Yorkshire now are. Yet the fecundity in those
large towns was then 4. 5. And Mr Sadler tells us that it is now only 4. 2
in Westmoreland and the North Riding.
It is scarcely necessary to say anything about the censuses of
the Netherlands, as Mr Sadler himself confesses that there is some
difficulty in reconciling them with his theory, and helps out his
awkward explanation by supposing, quite gratuitously, as it seems to us,
that the official documents are inaccurate. The argument which he has
drawn from the United States will detain us but for a very short time.
He has not told us,--perhaps he had not the means of telling us,--what
proportion the number of births in the different parts of that country
bears to the number of marriages. He shows that in the thinly peopled
states the number of children bears a greater proportion to the number
of grown-up people than in the old states; and this, he conceives, is a
sufficient proof that the condensation of the population is unfavourable
to fecundity. We deny the inference altogether. Nothing can be more
obvious than the explanation of the phenomenon. The back settlements
are for the most part peopled by emigration from the old states; and
emigrants are almost always breeders. They are almost always vigorous
people in the prime of life. Mr Sadler himself, in another part of
his book, in which he tries very unsuccessfully to show that the
rapid multiplication of the people of America is principally owing to
emigration from Europe, states this fact in the plainest manner:
"Nothing is more certain, than that emigration is almost universally
supplied by 'single persons in the beginning of mature life;' nor,
secondly, that such persons, as Dr Franklin long ago asserted, 'marry
and raise families. '
"Nor is this all. It is not more true, that emigrants, generally
speaking, consist of individuals in the prime of life, than that 'they
are the most active and vigorous' of that age, as Dr Seybert describes
them to be. They are, as it respects the principle at issue, a select
class, even compared with that of their own age, generally considered.
Their very object in leaving their native countries is to settle in
life, a phrase that needs no explanation; and they do so. No equal
number of human beings, therefore, have ever given so large or rapid an
increase to a community as 'settlers' have invariably done. "
It is perfectly clear that children are more numerous in the back
settlements of America than in the maritime states, not because
unoccupied land makes people prolific, but because the most prolific
people go to the unoccupied land.
Mr Sadler having, as he conceives, fully established his theory of
population by statistical evidence, proceeds to prove, "that it is
in unison, or rather required by the principles of physiology. " The
difference between himself and his opponents he states as follows:--
"In pursuing this part of my subject, I must begin by reminding the
reader of the difference between those who hold the superfecundity of
mankind and myself, in regard to those principles which will form the
basis of the present argument. They contend, that production precedes
population; I, on the contrary, maintain that population precedes, and
is indeed the cause of, production. They teach that man breeds up to the
capital, or in proportion to the abundance of the food, he possesses: I
assert, that he is comparatively sterile when he is wealthy, and that
he breeds in proportion to his poverty; not meaning, however, by that
poverty, a state of privation approaching to actual starvation, any more
than, I suppose, they would contend, that extreme and culpable excess
is the grand patron of population. In a word, they hold that a state
of ease and affluence is the great promoter of prolificness. I maintain
that a considerable degree of labour, and even privation, is a more
efficient cause of an increased degree of human fecundity. "
To prove this point, he quotes Aristotle, Hippocrates, Dr Short, Dr
Gregory, Dr Perceval, M. Villermi, Lord Bacon, and Rousseau. We will not
dispute about it; for it seems quite clear to us that if he succeeds in
establishing it he overturns his own theory. If men breed in proportion
to their poverty, as he tells us here,--and at the same time breed
in inverse proportion to their numbers, as he told us before,--it
necessarily follows that the poverty of men must be in inverse
proportion to their numbers. Inverse proportion, indeed, as we have
shown, is not the phrase which expresses Mr Sadler's meaning. To
speak more correctly, it follows, from his own positions, that, if one
population be thinner than another, it will also be poorer. Is this the
fact? Mr Sadler tells us, in one of those tables which we have already
quoted, that in the United States the population is four to a square
mile, and the fecundity 5. 22 to a marriage, and that in Russia the
population is twenty-three to a square mile, and the fecundity 4. 94 to
a marriage. Is the North American labourer poorer than the Russian boor?
If not, what becomes of Mr Sadler's argument?
The most decisive proof of Mr Sadler's theory, according to him, is that
which he has kept for the last. It is derived from the registers of the
English Peerage. The peers, he says, and says truly, are the class with
respect to whom we possess the most accurate statistical information.
"Touching their NUMBER, this has been accurately known and recorded ever
since the order has existed in the country. For several centuries past,
the addition to it of a single individual has been a matter of public
interest and notoriety: this hereditary honour conferring not personal
dignity merely, but important privileges, and being almost always
identified with great wealth and influence. The records relating to
it are kept with the most scrupulous attention, not only by heirs and
expectants, but they are appealed to by more distant connections, as
conferring distinction on all who can claim such affinity. Hence there
are few disputes concerning successions to this rank, but such as go
back to very remote periods. In later times, the marriages, births, and
deaths, of the nobility, have not only been registered by and known to
those personally interested, but have been published periodically, and,
consequently, subject to perpetual correction and revision; while many
of the most powerful motives which can influence the human mind conspire
to preserve these records from the slightest falsification. Compared
with these, therefore, all other registers, or reports, whether of sworn
searchers or others, are incorrectness itself. "
Mr Sadler goes on to tell us that the peers are a marrying class, and
that their general longevity proves them to be a healthy class. Still
peerages often become extinct;--and from this fact he infers that they
are a sterile class. So far, says he, from increasing in geometrical
progression, they do not even keep up their numbers. "Nature interdicts
their increase. "
"Thus," says he, "in all ages of the world, and in every nation of it,
have the highest ranks of the community been the most sterile, and
the lowest the most prolific. As it respects our own country, from the
lowest grade of society, the Irish peasant, to the highest, the British
peer, this remains a conspicuous truth; and the regulation of the degree
of fecundity conformably to this principle, through the intermediate
gradations of society, constitutes one of the features of the system
developed in these pages. "
We take the issue which Mr Sadler has himself offered. We agree with
him, that the registers of the English Peerage are of far higher
authority than any other statistical documents. We are content that
by those registers his principle should be judged. And we meet him by
positively denying his facts. We assert that the English nobles are not
only not a sterile, but an eminently prolific, part of the community.
Mr Sadler concludes that they are sterile, merely because peerages often
become extinct. Is this the proper way of ascertaining the point? Is
it thus that he avails himself of those registers on the accuracy and
fulness of which he descants so largely? Surely his right course would
have been to count the marriages, and the number of births in the
Peerage. This he has not done;--but we have done it. And what is the
result?
It appears from the last edition of Debrett's "Peerage", published in
1828, that there were at that time 287 peers of the United Kingdom,
who had been married once or oftener. The whole number of marriages
contracted by these 287 peers was 333. The number of children by these
marriages was 1437,--more than five to a peer,--more than 4. 3 to a
marriage,--more, that is to say, than the average number in those
counties of England in which, according to Mr Sadler's own statement,
the fecundity is the greatest.
But this is not all. These marriages had not, in 1828, produced their
full effect. Some of them had been very lately contracted. In a very
large proportion of them there was every probability of additional
issue. To allow for this probability, we may safely add one to the
average which we have already obtained, and rate the fecundity of a
noble marriage in England at 5. 3;--higher than the fecundity which Mr
Sadler assigns to the people of the United States. Even if we do not
make this allowance, the average fecundity of marriages of peers is
higher by one-fifth than the average fecundity of marriages throughout
the kingdom. And this is the sterile class! This is the class which
"Nature has interdicted from increasing! " The evidence to which Mr
Sadler has himself appealed proves that his principle is false,--utterly
false,--wildly and extravagantly false. It proves that a class, living
during half of every year in the most crowded population in the world,
breeds faster than those who live in the country;--that the class which
enjoys the greatest degree of luxury and ease breeds faster than the
class which undergoes labour and privation. To talk a little in Mr
Sadler's style, we must own that we are ourselves surprised at the
results which our examination of the peerage has brought out. We
certainly should have thought that the habits of fashionable life, and
long residence even in the most airy parts of so great a city as London,
would have been more unfavourable to the fecundity of the higher orders
than they appear to be.
Peerages, it is true, often become extinct. But it is quite clear, from
what we have stated, that this is not because peeresses are barren.
There is no difficulty in discovering what the causes really are. In the
first place, most of the titles of our nobles are limited to heirs male;
so that, though the average fecundity of a noble marriage is upwards
of five, yet, for the purpose of keeping up a peerage, it cannot be
reckoned at much more than two and a half. Secondly, though the peers
are, as Mr Sadler says, a marrying class, the younger sons of peers are
decidedly not a marrying class; so that a peer, though he has at least
as great a chance of having a son as his neighbours, has less chance
than they of having a collateral heir.
We have now disposed, we think, of Mr Sadler's principle of population.
Our readers must, by this time, be pretty well satisfied as to his
qualifications for setting up theories of his own.
We will, therefore,
present them with a few instances of the skill and fairness which he
shows when he undertakes to pull down the theories of other men. The
doctrine of Mr Malthus, that population, if not checked by want,
by vice, by excessive mortality, or by the prudent self-denial of
individuals, would increase in a geometric progression, is, in Mr
Sadler's opinion, at once false and atrocious.
"It may at once be denied," says he, "that human increase proceeds
geometrically; and for this simple but decisive reason, that the
existence of a geometrical ratio of increase in the works of nature
is neither true nor possible. It would fling into utter confusion all
order, time, magnitude, and space. "
This is as curious a specimen of reasoning as any that has been offered
to the world since the days when theories were founded on the principle
that nature abhors a vacuum. We proceed a few pages further, however;
and we then find that geometric progression is unnatural only in those
cases in which Mr Malthus conceives that it exists; and that, in all
cases in which Mr Malthus denies the existence of a geometric ratio,
nature changes sides, and adopts that ratio as the rule of increase.
Mr Malthus holds that subsistence will increase only in an arithmetical
ratio. "As far as nature has to do with the question," says Mr Sadler,
"men might, for instance, plant twice the number of peas, and breed
from a double number of the same animals, with equal prospect of their
multiplication. " Now, if Mr Sadler thinks that, as far as nature is
concerned, four sheep will double as fast as two, and eight as fast as
four, how can he deny that the geometrical ratio of increase does
exist in the works of nature? Or has he a definition of his own for
geometrical progression, as well as for inverse proportion?
Mr Malthus, and those who agree with him, have generally referred to
the United States, as a country in which the human race increases in a
geometrical ratio, and have fixed on thirty-five years as the term in
which the population of that country doubles itself. Mr Sadler contends
that it is physically impossible for a people to double in twenty-five
years; nay, that thirty-five years is far too short a period,--that
the Americans do not double by procreation in less than forty-seven
years,--and that the rapid increase of their numbers is produced by
emigration from Europe.
Emigration has certainly had some effect in increasing the population of
the United States. But so great has the rate of that increase been that,
after making full allowance for the effect of emigration, there will be
a residue, attributable to procreation alone, amply sufficient to double
the population in twenty-five years.
Mr Sadler states the results of the four censuses as follows:--
"There were, of white inhabitants, in the whole of the United States in
1790, 3,093,111; in 1800, 4,309,656; in 1810, 5,862,093; and in 1820,
7,861,710. The increase, in the first term, being 39 per cent. ; that in
the second, 36 per cent. ; and that in the third and last, 33 per cent.
It is superfluous to say, that it is utterly impossible to deduce
the geometric theory of human increase, whatever be the period of
duplication, from such terms as these. "
Mr Sadler is a bad arithmetician. The increase in the last term is
not as he states it, 33 per cent. , but more than 34 per cent. Now, an
increase of 32 per cent. in ten years, is more than sufficient to double
the population in twenty-five years. And there is, we think, very strong
reason to believe that the white population of the United States does
increase by 32 per cent. every ten years.
Our reason is this. There is in the United States a class of persons
whose numbers are not increased by emigration,--the negro slaves. During
the interval which elapsed between the census of 1810 and the census
of 1820, the change in their numbers must have been produced by
procreation, and by procreation alone. Their situation, though much
happier than that of the wretched beings who cultivate the sugar
plantations of Trinidad and Demerara, cannot be supposed to be more
favourable to health and fecundity than that of free labourers. In
1810, the slave-trade had been but recently abolished; and there were
in consequence many more male than female slaves,--a circumstance, of
course, very unfavourable to procreation. Slaves are perpetually passing
into the class of freemen; but no freeman ever descends into servitude;
so that the census will not exhibit the whole effect of the procreation
which really takes place.
We find, by the census of 1810, that the number of slaves in the Union
was then 1,191,000. In 1820, they had increased to 1,538,000. That is
to say, in ten years, they had increased 29 per cent. --within three
per cent. of that rate of increase which would double their numbers
in twenty-five years. We may, we think, fairly calculate that, if the
female slaves had been as numerous as the males, and if no manumissions
had taken place, the census of the slave population would have exhibited
an increase of 32 per cent. in ten years.
If we are right in fixing on 32 per cent. as the rate at which the white
population of America increases by procreation in ten years, it will
follow that, during the last ten years of the eighteenth century, nearly
one-sixth of the increase was the effect of emigration; from 1800 to
1810, about one-ninth; and from 1810 to 1820, about one-seventeenth.
This is what we should have expected; for it is clear that, unless the
number of emigrants be constantly increasing, it must, as compared with
the resident population, be relatively decreasing. The number of persons
added to the population of the United States by emigration, between 1810
and 1820, would be nearly 120,000. From the data furnished by Mr Sadler
himself, we should be inclined to think that this would be a fair
estimate.
"Dr Seybert says, that the passengers to ten of the principal ports of
the United States, in the year 1817, amounted to 22,235; of whom 11,977
were from Great Britain and Ireland; 4164 from Germany and Holland; 1245
from France; 58 from Italy, 2901 from the British possessions in North
America; 1569 from the West Indies; and from all other countries, 321.
These, however, we may conclude, with the editor of Styles's Register,
were far short of the number that arrived. "
We have not the honour of knowing either Dr Seybert or the editor of
Styles's Register. We cannot, therefore, decide on their respective
claims to our confidence so peremptorily as Mr Sadler thinks fit to do.
Nor can we agree to what Mr Sadler very gravely assigns as a reason for
disbelieving Dr Seyberts's testimony. "Such accounts," he says, "if not
wilfully exaggerated, must always fall short of the truth. " It would be
a curious question of casuistry to determine what a man ought to do in a
case in which he cannot tell the truth except by being guilty of
wilful exaggeration. We will, however, suppose, with Mr Sadler, that Dr
Seybert, finding himself compelled to choose between two sins, preferred
telling a falsehood to exaggerating; and that he has consequently
underrated the number of emigrants. We will take it at double of the
Doctor's estimate, and suppose that, in 1817, 45,000 Europeans crossed
to the United States. Now, it must be remembered that the year 1817 was
a year of the severest and most general distress all over Europe,--a
year of scarcity everywhere, and of cruel famine in some places. There
can, therefore, be no doubt that the emigration of 1817 was very far
above the average, probably more than three times that of an ordinary
year. Till the year 1815, the war rendered it almost impossible to
emigrate to the United States either from England or from the Continent.
If we suppose the average emigration of the remaining years to have been
16,000, we shall probably not be much mistaken. In 1818 and 1819,
the number was certainly much beyond that average; in 1815 and 1816,
probably much below it. But, even if we were to suppose that, in every
year from the peace to 1820, the number of emigrants had been as high as
we have supposed it to be in 1817, the increase by procreation among the
white inhabitants of the United States would still appear to be about 30
per cent. in ten years.
Mr Sadler acknowledges that Cobbett exaggerates the number of emigrants
when he states it at 150,000 a year. Yet even this estimate, absurdly
great as it is, would not be sufficient to explain the increase of the
population of the United States on Mr Sadler's principles. He is, he
tells us, "convinced that doubling in 35 years is a far more rapid
duplication than ever has taken place in that country from procreation
only. " An increase of 20 per cent. in ten years, by procreation, would
therefore be the very utmost that he would allow to be possible. We have
already shown, by reference to the census of the slave population, that
this doctrine is quite absurd. And, if we suppose it to be sound, we
shall be driven to the conclusion that above eight hundred thousand
people emigrated from Europe to the United States in a space of little
more than five years. The whole increase of the white population from
1810 to 1820 was within a few hundreds of 2,000,000. If we are to
attribute to procreation only 20 per cent. on the number returned by the
census of 1810, we shall have about 830,000 persons to account for in
some other way;--and to suppose that the emigrants who went to America
between the peace of 1815 and the census of 1820, with the children who
were born to them there, would make up that number, would be the height
of absurdity.
We could say much more; but we think it quite unnecessary at present. We
have shown that Mr Sadler is careless in the collection of facts,--that
he is incapable of reasoning on facts when he has collected them,--that
he does not understand the simplest terms of science,--that he has
enounced a proposition of which he does not know the meaning,--that
the proposition which he means to enounce, and which he tries to prove,
leads directly to all those consequences which he represents as impious
and immoral,--and that, from the very documents to which he has himself
appealed, it may be demonstrated that his theory is false. We may,
perhaps, resume the subject when his next volume appears. Meanwhile, we
hope that he will delay its publication until he has learned a little
arithmetic, and unlearned a great deal of eloquence.
*****
SADLER'S REFUTATION REFUTED. (January 1831. )
"A Refutation of an Article in the Edinburgh Review (No.
CII. ) entitled, 'Sadler's Law of Population, and disproof of
Human Superfecundity;' containing also Additional Proofs of
the Principle enunciated in that Treatise, founded on the
Censuses of different Countries recently published. " By
Michael Thomas Sadler, M. P. 8vo. London: 1830.
"Before anything came out against my Essay, I was told I must prepare
myself for a storm coming against it, it being resolved by some men
that it was necessary that book of mine should, as it is phrased, be run
down. "--John Locke.
We have, in violation of our usual practice, transcribed Mr Sadler's
title-page from top to bottom, motto and all. The parallel implied
between the Essay on the Human Understanding and the Essay on
Superfecundity is exquisitely laughable. We can match it, however, with
mottoes as ludicrous. We remember to have heard of a dramatic piece,
entitled "News from Camperdown," written soon after Lord Duncan's
victory, by a man once as much in his own good graces as Mr Sadler is,
and now as much forgotten as Mr Sadler will soon be, Robert Heron. His
piece was brought upon the stage, and damned, "as it is phrased," in
the second act; but the author, thinking that it had been unfairly and
unjustly "run down," published it, in order to put his critics to shame,
with this motto from Swift: "When a true genius appears in the world,
you may know him by this mark--that the dunces are all in confederacy
against him. " We remember another anecdote, which may perhaps be
acceptable to so zealous a churchman as Mr Sadler. A certain Antinomian
preacher, the oracle of a barn, in a county of which we do not think it
proper to mention the name, finding that divinity was not by itself a
sufficiently lucrative profession, resolved to combine with it that of
dog-stealing. He was, by ill-fortune, detected in several offences of
this description, and was in consequence brought before two justices,
who, in virtue of the powers given them by an act of parliament,
sentenced him to a whipping for each theft. The degrading punishment
inflicted on the pastor naturally thinned the flock; and the poor man
was in danger of wanting bread. He accordingly put forth a handbill
solemnly protesting his innocence, describing his sufferings, and
appealing to the Christian charity of the public; and to his pathetic
address he prefixed this most appropriate text: "Thrice was I beaten
with rods. --St Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians. " He did not perceive
that, though St Paul had been scourged, no number of whippings, however
severe, will of themselves entitle a man to be considered as an apostle.
Mr Sadler seems to us to have fallen into a somewhat similar error. He
should remember that, though Locke may have been laughed at, so has Sir
Claudius Hunter; and that it takes something more than the laughter of
all the world to make a Locke.
The body of this pamphlet by no means justifies the parallel so modestly
insinuated on the title-page. Yet we must own that, though Mr Sadler
has not risen to the level of Locke, he has done what was almost as
difficult, if not as honourable--he has fallen below his own. He is at
best a bad writer. His arrangement is an elaborate confusion. His style
has been constructed, with great care, in such a manner as to produce
the least possible effect by means of the greatest possible number of
words. Aspiring to the exalted character of a Christian philosopher, he
can never preserve through a single paragraph either the calmness of a
philosopher or the meekness of a Christian. His ill-nature would make a
very little wit formidable. But, happily, his efforts to wound resemble
those of a juggler's snake. The bags of poison are full, but the fang is
wanting. In this foolish pamphlet, all the unpleasant peculiarities of
his style and temper are brought out in the strongest manner. He is from
the beginning to the end in a paroxysm of rage, and would certainly do
us some mischief if he knew how. We will give a single instance for the
present. Others will present themselves as we proceed. We laughed at
some doggerel verses which he cited, and which we, never having seen
them before, suspected to be his own. We are now sure that if the
principle on which Solomon decided a famous case of filiation were
correct, there can be no doubt as to the justice of our suspicion. Mr
Sadler, who, whatever elements of the poetical character he may lack,
possesses the poetical irritability in an abundance which might have
sufficed for Homer himself, resolved to retaliate on the person, who,
as he supposed, had reviewed him. He has, accordingly, ransacked
some collection of college verses, in the hope of finding, among the
performances of his supposed antagonist, something as bad as his own.
And we must in fairness admit that he has succeeded pretty well. We must
admit that the gentleman in question sometimes put into his exercises,
at seventeen, almost as great nonsense as Mr Sadler is in the habit of
putting into his books at sixty.
Mr Sadler complains that we have devoted whole pages to mere abuse of
him. We deny the charge. We have, indeed, characterised, in terms of
just reprehension, that spirit which shows itself in every part of his
prolix work. Those terms of reprehension we are by no means inclined
to retract; and we conceive that we might have used much stronger
expressions, without the least offence either to truth or to decorum.
There is a limit prescribed to us by our sense of what is due to
ourselves. But we think that no indulgence is due to Mr Sadler. A writer
who distinctly announces that he has not conformed to the candour of the
age--who makes it his boast that he expresses himself throughout with
the greatest plainness and freedom--and whose constant practice proves
that by plainness and freedom he means coarseness and rancour--has
no right to expect that others shall remember courtesies which he has
forgotten, or shall respect one who has ceased to respect himself.
Mr Sadler declares that he has never vilified Mr Malthus personally,
and has confined himself to attacking the doctrines which that gentleman
maintains. We should wish to leave that point to the decision of all
who have read Mr Sadler's book, or any twenty pages of it. To quote
particular instances of a temper which penetrates and inspires the whole
work, is to weaken our charge. Yet, that we may not be suspected of
flinching, we will give two specimens,--the two first which occur to our
recollection. "Whose minister is it that speaks thus? " says Mr Sadler,
after misrepresenting in a most extraordinary manner, though, we are
willing to believe, unintentionally, one of the positions of Mr Malthus.
"Whose minister is it that speaks thus? That of the lover and avenger of
little children? " Again, Mr Malthus recommends, erroneously perhaps, but
assuredly from humane motives, that alms, when given, should be given
very sparingly. Mr Sadler quotes the recommendation, and adds the
following courteous comment:--"The tender mercies of the wicked are
cruel. " We cannot think that a writer who indulges in these indecent and
unjust attacks on professional and personal character has any right to
complain of our sarcasms on his metaphors and rhymes.
We will now proceed to examine the reply which Mr Sadler has thought
fit to make to our arguments. He begins by attacking our remarks on the
origin of evil. They are, says he, too profound for common apprehension;
and he hopes that they are too profound for our own. That they seem
profound to him we can well believe. Profundity, in its secondary as in
its primary sense, is a relative term. When Grildrig was nearly drowned
in the Brobdingnagian cream-jug he doubtless thought it very deep. But
to common apprehension our reasoning would, we are persuaded, appear
perfectly simple.
The theory of Mr Malthus, says Mr Sadler, cannot be true, because it
asserts the existence of a great and terrible evil, and is therefore
inconsistent with the goodness of God. We answer thus. We know that
there are in the world great and terrible evils. In spite of these
evils, we believe in the goodness of God. Why may we not then continue
to believe in his goodness, though another evil should be added to the
list?
How does Mr Sadler answer this? Merely by telling us, that we are too
wicked to be reasoned with. He completely shrinks from the question; a
question, be it remembered, not raised by us--a question which we should
have felt strong objections to raising unnecessarily--a question put
forward by himself, as intimately connected with the subject of his
two ponderous volumes. He attempts to carp at detached parts of our
reasoning on the subject. With what success he carries on this guerilla
war after declining a general action with the main body of our argument
our readers shall see.
"The Reviewer sends me to Paley, who is, I confess, rather more
intelligible on the subject, and who, fortunately, has decided the very
point in dispute. I will first give the words of the Reviewer, who, when
speaking of my general argument regarding the magnitude of the evils,
moral and physical, implied in the theory I oppose, sums up his ideas
thus:--'Mr Sadler says, that it is not a light or transient evil, but a
great and permanent evil. What then? The question of the origin of evil
is a question of aye or no,--not a question of MORE or LESS. ' But what
says Paley? His express rule is this, that 'when we cannot resolve all
appearances into benevolence of design, we make the FEW give place to
the MANY, the LITTLE to the GREAT; that we take our judgment from a
large and decided preponderancy. ' Now in weighing these two authorities,
directly at issue on this point, I think there will be little trouble
in determining which we shall make 'to give place;' or, if we 'look to
a large and decided preponderancy' of either talent, learning, or
benevolence, from whom we shall 'take our judgment. ' The effrontery, or,
to speak more charitably, the ignorance of a reference to Paley on this
subject, and in this instance, is really marvellous. "
Now, does not Mr Sadler see that the very words which he quotes from
Paley contain in themselves a refutation of his whole argument? Paley
says, indeed, as every man in his senses would say, that in a certain
case, which he has specified, the more and the less come into question.
But in what case? "When we CANNOT resolve all appearances into the
benevolence of design. " It is better that there should be a little
evil than a great deal of evil. This is self-evident. But it is also
self-evident, that no evil is better than a little evil. Why, then, is
there any evil? It is a mystery which we cannot solve. It is a mystery
which Paley, by the very words which Mr Sadler has quoted, acknowledges
himself unable to solve; and it is because he cannot solve that mystery
that he proceeds to take into consideration the more and the less.
Believing in the divine goodness, we must necessarily believe that the
evils which exist are necessary to avert greater evils. But what those
greater evils are, we do not know. How the happiness of any part of the
sentient creation would be in any respect diminished if, for example,
children cut their teeth without pain, we cannot understand. The case
is exactly the same with the principle of Mr Malthus. If superfecundity
exists, it exists, no doubt, because it is a less evil than some other
evil which otherwise would exist. Can Mr Sadler prove that this is an
impossibility?
One single expression which Mr Sadler employs on this subject is
sufficient to show how utterly incompetent he is to discuss it. "On the
Christian hypothesis," says he, "no doubt exists as to the origin of
evil. " He does not, we think, understand what is meant by the origin
of evil. The Christian Scriptures profess to give no solution of that
mystery. They relate facts: but they leave the metaphysical question
undetermined. They tell us that man fell; but why he was not so
constituted as to be incapable of falling, or why the Supreme Being has
not mitigated the consequences of the Fall more than they actually have
been mitigated, the Scriptures did not tell us, and, it may without
presumption be said, could not tell us, unless we had been creatures
different from what we are. There is something, either in the nature of
our faculties or in the nature of the machinery employed by us for the
purpose of reasoning, which condemns us, on this and similar subjects,
to hopeless ignorance. Man can understand these high matters only by
ceasing to be man, just as a fly can understand a lemma of Newton only
by ceasing to be a fly. To make it an objection to the Christian system
that it gives us no solution of these difficulties, is to make it an
objection to the Christian system that it is a system formed for human
beings. Of the puzzles of the Academy, there is not one which does not
apply as strongly to Deism as to Christianity, and to Atheism as to
Deism. There are difficulties in everything. Yet we are sure that
something must be true.
If revelation speaks on the subject of the origin of evil it speaks
only to discourage dogmatism and temerity. In the most ancient, the most
beautiful, and the most profound of all works on the subject, the Book
of Job, both the sufferer who complains of the divine government, and
the injudicious advisers who attempt to defend it on wrong principles,
are silenced by the voice of supreme wisdom, and reminded that the
question is beyond the reach of the human intellect. St Paul silences
the supposed objector, who strives to force him into controversy, in
the same manner. The church has been, ever since the apostolic times,
agitated by this question, and by a question which is inseparable from
it, the question of fate and free-will. The greatest theologians and
philosophers have acknowledged that these things were too high for them,
and have contended themselves with hinting at what seemed to be the most
probable solution. What says Johnson? "All our effort ends in belief
that for the evils of life there is some good reason, and in confession
that the reason cannot be found. " What says Paley? "Of the origin of
evil no universal solution has been discovered. I mean no solution which
reaches to all cases of complaint. --The consideration of general laws,
although it may concern the question of the origin of evil very nearly,
which I think it does, rests in views disproportionate to our faculties,
and in a knowledge which we do not possess. It serves rather to account
for the obscurity of the subject, than to supply us with distinct
answers to our difficulties.
My faith upon it! My life upon it! " The good man had heard the fact
asserted by his nurse when he was a child,--had always considered it as
a strong confirmation of the Scriptures, and fully believed it without
having ever thought of verifying it. The king ordered a man and woman,
the leanest that could be found, to be brought before him, and desired
his spiritual instructor to count their ribs. The father counted over
and over, upward and downward, and still found the same number in both.
He then cleared his throat, stammered, stuttered, and began to assure
the king that though he had committed a little error in saying that a
woman had more ribs than a man, he was quite right in saying that the
first woman was made out of the rib of the first man. "How can I tell
that? " said the king. "You come to me with a strange story which you say
is revealed to you from heaven. I have already made you confess that
one half of it is a lie: and how can you have the face to expect that I
shall believe the other half? "
We have shown that Mr Sadler's theory, if it be true, is as much a
theory of superfecundity as that of Mr Malthus. But it is not true. And
from Mr Sadler's own tables we will prove that it is not true.
The fecundity of the human race in England Mr Sadler rates as follows:--
"Where the inhabitants are found to be on the square mile--
From To Counties Number of births per 100 marriages
50 100 2 420
100 150 9 396
150 200 16 390
200 250 4 388
250 300 5 378
300 350 3 353
500 600 2 331
4000 and upwards 1 246
Having given this table, he begins, as usual, to boast and triumph.
"Were there not another document on the subject in existence," says he,
"the facts thus deduced from the census of England are sufficient to
demonstrate the position, that the fecundity of human beings varies
inversely as their numbers. " In no case would these facts demonstrate
that the fecundity of human beings varies inversely as their numbers
in the right sense of the words inverse variation. But certainly
they would, "if there were no other document in existence," appear
to indicate something like what Mr Sadler means by inverse variation.
Unhappily for him, however, there are other documents in existence; and
he has himself furnished us with them. We will extract another of his
tables:--
TABLE LXIV.
Showing the Operation of the Law of Population in the different Hundreds
of the County of Lancaster.
(In the following table the name of the Hundred is followed in order by:
Population on each Square Mile.
Square Miles.
Population in 1821, exclusive of Towns of separate Jurisdiction.
Marriages from 1811 to 1821.
Baptisms from 1811 to 1821.
Baptisms to 100 Marriages. )
Lonsdale : 96 : 441 : 42,486 : 3,651 : 16,129 : 442
Almondness : 267 : 228 : 60,930 : 3,670 : 15,228 : 415
Leyland : 354 : 126 : 44,583 : 2,858 : 11,182 : 391
West Derby : 409 : 377 : 154,040 : 24,182 : 86,407 : 357
Blackburn : 513 : 286 : 146,608 : 10,814 : 31,463 : 291
Salford : 869 : 373 : 322,592 : 40,143 : 114,941 : 286
Mr Sadler rejoices much over this table. The results, he says, have
surprised himself; and, indeed, as we shall show, they might well have
done so.
The result of his inquiries with respect to France he presents in the
following table:
"In those departments where there are to each inhabitant--
Hectares Departments Legitimate births to
every 1000 marriages
4 to 5 2 5130
3 to 4 3 4372
2 to 3 30 4250
1 to 2 44 4234
. 06 to 1 5 4146
. 06 1 2557
Then comes the shout of exaltation as regularly as the Gloria Patri
at the end of a Psalm. "Is there any possibility of gainsaying the
conclusions these facts force upon us; namely that the fecundity of
marriages is regulated by the density of the population, and inversely
to it? "
Certainly these tables, taken separately, look well for Mr Sadler's
theory. He must be a bungling gamester who cannot win when he is
suffered to pack the cards his own way. We must beg leave to shuffle
them a little; and we will venture to promise our readers that some
curious results will follow from the operation. In nine counties of
England, says Mr Sadler, in which the population is from 100 to 150
on the square mile, the births to 100 marriages are 396. He afterwards
expresses some doubt as to the accuracy of the documents from which this
estimate has been formed, and rates the number of births as high as 414.
Let him take his choice. We will allow him every advantage.
In the table which we have quoted, numbered lxiv. , he tells us that in
Almondness, where the population is 267 to the square mile, there are
415 births to 100 marriages. The population of Almondness is twice as
thick as the population of the nine counties referred to in the other
table. Yet the number of births to a marriage is greater in Almondness
than in those counties.
Once more, he tells us that in three counties, in which the population
was from 300 to 350 on the square mile, the births to 100 marriages were
353. He afterwards rates them at 375. Again we say, let him take his
choice. But from his table of the population of Lancashire it appears
that, in the hundred of Leyland, where the population is 354 to the
square mile, the number of births to 100 marriages is 391. Here again
we have the marriages becoming more fruitful as the population becomes
denser.
Let us now shuffle the censuses of England and France together. In two
English counties which contain from 50 to 100 inhabitants on the square
mile, the births to 100 marriages are, according to Mr Sadler, 420. But
in forty-four departments of France, in which there are from one to two
hecatares to each inhabitant, that is to say, in which the population is
from 125 to 250 or rather more, to the square mile, the number of births
to 100 marriages is 423 and a fraction.
Again, in five departments of France in which there is less than one
hecatare to each inhabitant, that is to say, in which the population is
more than 250 to the square mile, the number of births to 100 marriages
is 414 and a fraction. But in the four counties of England in which the
population is from 200 to 250 on the square mile, the number of births
to 100 marriages is, according to one of Mr Sadler's tables, only 388,
and by his very highest estimate no more than 402.
Mr Sadler gives us a long table of all the towns of England and Ireland,
which, he tells us, irrefragably demonstrates his principle. We assert,
and will prove, that these tables are alone sufficient to upset his
whole theory.
It is very true that, in the great towns the number of births to a
marriage appears to be smaller than in the less populous towns. But we
learn some other facts from these tables which we should be glad to know
how Mr Sadler will explain. We find that the fecundity in towns of
fewer than 3000 inhabitants is actually much greater than the average
fecundity of the kingdom, and that the fecundity in towns of between
3000 and 4000 inhabitants is at least as great as the average fecundity
of the kingdom. The average fecundity of a marriage in towns of fewer
than 3000 inhabitants is about four; in towns of between 3000 and 4000
inhabitants it is 3. 60. Now, the average fecundity of England, when it
contained only 160 inhabitants to a square mile, and when, therefore,
according to the new law of population, the fecundity must have been
greater than it now is, was only, according to Mr Sadler, 3. 66 to a
marriage. To proceed,--the fecundity of a marriage in the English towns
of between 4000 and 5000 inhabitants is stated at 3. 56. But, when
we turn to Mr Sadler's table of counties, we find the fecundity of a
marriage in Warwickshire and Staffordshire rated at only 3. 48, and in
Lancashire and Surrey at only 3. 41.
These facts disprove Mr Sadler's principle; and the fact on which he
lays so much stress--that the fecundity is less in the great towns than
in the small towns--does not tend in any degree to prove his principle.
There is not the least reason to believe that the population is more
dense, ON A GIVEN SPACE, in London or Manchester than in a town of 4000
inhabitants. But it is quite certain that the population is more dense
in a town of 4000 inhabitants than in Warwickshire or Lancashire. That
the fecundity of Manchester is less than the fecundity of Sandwich or
Guildford is a circumstance which has nothing whatever to do with Mr
Sadler's theory. But that the fecundity of Sandwich is greater than the
average fecundity of Kent,--that the fecundity of Guildford is greater
than the average fecundity of Surrey,--as from his own tables appears to
be the case,--these are facts utterly inconsistent with his theory.
We need not here examine why it is that the human race is less fruitful
in great cities than in small towns or in the open country. The fact has
long been notorious. We are inclined to attribute it to the same causes
which tend to abridge human life in great cities,--to general sickliness
and want of tone, produced by close air and sedentary employments. Thus
far, and thus far only, we agree with Mr Sadler, that, when population
is crowded together in such masses that the general health and energy of
the frame are impaired by the condensation, and by the habits attending
on the condensation, then the fecundity of the race diminishes. But this
is evidently a check of the same class with war, pestilence, and famine.
It is a check for the operation of which Mr Malthus has allowed.
That any condensation which does not affect the general health will
affect fecundity, is not only not proved--it is disproved--by Mr
Sadler's own tables.
Mr Sadler passes on to Prussia, and sums up his information respecting
that country as follows:--
(In the following table numbers appear in the order: Inhabitants on a
Square Mile, German.
Number of Provinces.
Births to 100 Marriages, 1754.
Births to 100 Marriages, 1784.
Births to 100 Marriages, Busching. )
Under 1000 : 2 : 434 : 472 : 503
1000 to 2000 : 4 : 414 : 455 : 454
2000 to 3000 : 6 : 384 : 424 : 426
3000 to 4000 : 2 : 365 : 408 : 394
After the table comes the boast as usual:
"Thus is the law of population deduced from the registers of Prussia
also: and were the argument to pause here, it is conclusive. The
results obtained from the registers of this and the preceding countries,
exhibiting, as they do most clearly, the principle of human increase,
it is utterly impossible should have been the work of chance; on the
contrary, the regularity with which the facts class themselves in
conformity with that principle, and the striking analogy which the whole
of them bear to each other, demonstrate equally the design of Nature,
and the certainty of its accomplishment. "
We are sorry to disturb Mr Sadler's complacency. But, in our opinion,
this table completely disproves his whole principle. If we read the
columns perpendicularly, indeed, they seem to be in his favour. But how
stands the case if we read horizontally? Does Mr Sadler believe that,
during the thirty years which elapsed between 1754 and 1784, the
population of Prussia had been diminishing? No fact in history is better
ascertained than that, during the long peace which followed the seven
years' war, it increased with great rapidity. Indeed, if the fecundity
were what Mr Sadler states it to have been, it must have increased with
great rapidity. Yet, the ratio of births to marriages is greater in 1784
than in 1754, and that in every province. It is, therefore, perfectly
clear that the fecundity does not diminish whenever the density of the
population increases.
We will try another of Mr Sadler's tables:
TABLE LXXXI.
Showing the Estimated Prolificness of Marriages in England at the close
of the Seventeenth Century.
(In the following table the name of the Place is followed in order by:
Number of Inhabitants.
One Annual Marriage, to.
Number of Marriages.
Children to one Marriage.
Total Number of Births.
London : 530,000 : 106 : 5,000 : 4. : 20,000
Large Towns : 870,000 : 128 : 6,800 : 4. 5 : 30,000
Small Towns and
Country Places : 4,100,000 : 141 : 29,200 : 4. 8 : 140,160
-------------------------------------------
: 5,500,000 : 134 : 41,000 : 4. 65 : 190,760
Standing by itself, this table, like most of the others, seems to
support Mr Sadler's theory. But surely London, at the close of the
seventeenth century, was far more thickly peopled than the kingdom
of England now is. Yet the fecundity in London at the close of the
seventeenth century was 4; and the average fecundity of the whole
kingdom now is not more, according to Mr Sadler, than 3 1/2. Then again,
the large towns in 1700 were far more thickly peopled than Westmoreland
and the North Riding of Yorkshire now are. Yet the fecundity in those
large towns was then 4. 5. And Mr Sadler tells us that it is now only 4. 2
in Westmoreland and the North Riding.
It is scarcely necessary to say anything about the censuses of
the Netherlands, as Mr Sadler himself confesses that there is some
difficulty in reconciling them with his theory, and helps out his
awkward explanation by supposing, quite gratuitously, as it seems to us,
that the official documents are inaccurate. The argument which he has
drawn from the United States will detain us but for a very short time.
He has not told us,--perhaps he had not the means of telling us,--what
proportion the number of births in the different parts of that country
bears to the number of marriages. He shows that in the thinly peopled
states the number of children bears a greater proportion to the number
of grown-up people than in the old states; and this, he conceives, is a
sufficient proof that the condensation of the population is unfavourable
to fecundity. We deny the inference altogether. Nothing can be more
obvious than the explanation of the phenomenon. The back settlements
are for the most part peopled by emigration from the old states; and
emigrants are almost always breeders. They are almost always vigorous
people in the prime of life. Mr Sadler himself, in another part of
his book, in which he tries very unsuccessfully to show that the
rapid multiplication of the people of America is principally owing to
emigration from Europe, states this fact in the plainest manner:
"Nothing is more certain, than that emigration is almost universally
supplied by 'single persons in the beginning of mature life;' nor,
secondly, that such persons, as Dr Franklin long ago asserted, 'marry
and raise families. '
"Nor is this all. It is not more true, that emigrants, generally
speaking, consist of individuals in the prime of life, than that 'they
are the most active and vigorous' of that age, as Dr Seybert describes
them to be. They are, as it respects the principle at issue, a select
class, even compared with that of their own age, generally considered.
Their very object in leaving their native countries is to settle in
life, a phrase that needs no explanation; and they do so. No equal
number of human beings, therefore, have ever given so large or rapid an
increase to a community as 'settlers' have invariably done. "
It is perfectly clear that children are more numerous in the back
settlements of America than in the maritime states, not because
unoccupied land makes people prolific, but because the most prolific
people go to the unoccupied land.
Mr Sadler having, as he conceives, fully established his theory of
population by statistical evidence, proceeds to prove, "that it is
in unison, or rather required by the principles of physiology. " The
difference between himself and his opponents he states as follows:--
"In pursuing this part of my subject, I must begin by reminding the
reader of the difference between those who hold the superfecundity of
mankind and myself, in regard to those principles which will form the
basis of the present argument. They contend, that production precedes
population; I, on the contrary, maintain that population precedes, and
is indeed the cause of, production. They teach that man breeds up to the
capital, or in proportion to the abundance of the food, he possesses: I
assert, that he is comparatively sterile when he is wealthy, and that
he breeds in proportion to his poverty; not meaning, however, by that
poverty, a state of privation approaching to actual starvation, any more
than, I suppose, they would contend, that extreme and culpable excess
is the grand patron of population. In a word, they hold that a state
of ease and affluence is the great promoter of prolificness. I maintain
that a considerable degree of labour, and even privation, is a more
efficient cause of an increased degree of human fecundity. "
To prove this point, he quotes Aristotle, Hippocrates, Dr Short, Dr
Gregory, Dr Perceval, M. Villermi, Lord Bacon, and Rousseau. We will not
dispute about it; for it seems quite clear to us that if he succeeds in
establishing it he overturns his own theory. If men breed in proportion
to their poverty, as he tells us here,--and at the same time breed
in inverse proportion to their numbers, as he told us before,--it
necessarily follows that the poverty of men must be in inverse
proportion to their numbers. Inverse proportion, indeed, as we have
shown, is not the phrase which expresses Mr Sadler's meaning. To
speak more correctly, it follows, from his own positions, that, if one
population be thinner than another, it will also be poorer. Is this the
fact? Mr Sadler tells us, in one of those tables which we have already
quoted, that in the United States the population is four to a square
mile, and the fecundity 5. 22 to a marriage, and that in Russia the
population is twenty-three to a square mile, and the fecundity 4. 94 to
a marriage. Is the North American labourer poorer than the Russian boor?
If not, what becomes of Mr Sadler's argument?
The most decisive proof of Mr Sadler's theory, according to him, is that
which he has kept for the last. It is derived from the registers of the
English Peerage. The peers, he says, and says truly, are the class with
respect to whom we possess the most accurate statistical information.
"Touching their NUMBER, this has been accurately known and recorded ever
since the order has existed in the country. For several centuries past,
the addition to it of a single individual has been a matter of public
interest and notoriety: this hereditary honour conferring not personal
dignity merely, but important privileges, and being almost always
identified with great wealth and influence. The records relating to
it are kept with the most scrupulous attention, not only by heirs and
expectants, but they are appealed to by more distant connections, as
conferring distinction on all who can claim such affinity. Hence there
are few disputes concerning successions to this rank, but such as go
back to very remote periods. In later times, the marriages, births, and
deaths, of the nobility, have not only been registered by and known to
those personally interested, but have been published periodically, and,
consequently, subject to perpetual correction and revision; while many
of the most powerful motives which can influence the human mind conspire
to preserve these records from the slightest falsification. Compared
with these, therefore, all other registers, or reports, whether of sworn
searchers or others, are incorrectness itself. "
Mr Sadler goes on to tell us that the peers are a marrying class, and
that their general longevity proves them to be a healthy class. Still
peerages often become extinct;--and from this fact he infers that they
are a sterile class. So far, says he, from increasing in geometrical
progression, they do not even keep up their numbers. "Nature interdicts
their increase. "
"Thus," says he, "in all ages of the world, and in every nation of it,
have the highest ranks of the community been the most sterile, and
the lowest the most prolific. As it respects our own country, from the
lowest grade of society, the Irish peasant, to the highest, the British
peer, this remains a conspicuous truth; and the regulation of the degree
of fecundity conformably to this principle, through the intermediate
gradations of society, constitutes one of the features of the system
developed in these pages. "
We take the issue which Mr Sadler has himself offered. We agree with
him, that the registers of the English Peerage are of far higher
authority than any other statistical documents. We are content that
by those registers his principle should be judged. And we meet him by
positively denying his facts. We assert that the English nobles are not
only not a sterile, but an eminently prolific, part of the community.
Mr Sadler concludes that they are sterile, merely because peerages often
become extinct. Is this the proper way of ascertaining the point? Is
it thus that he avails himself of those registers on the accuracy and
fulness of which he descants so largely? Surely his right course would
have been to count the marriages, and the number of births in the
Peerage. This he has not done;--but we have done it. And what is the
result?
It appears from the last edition of Debrett's "Peerage", published in
1828, that there were at that time 287 peers of the United Kingdom,
who had been married once or oftener. The whole number of marriages
contracted by these 287 peers was 333. The number of children by these
marriages was 1437,--more than five to a peer,--more than 4. 3 to a
marriage,--more, that is to say, than the average number in those
counties of England in which, according to Mr Sadler's own statement,
the fecundity is the greatest.
But this is not all. These marriages had not, in 1828, produced their
full effect. Some of them had been very lately contracted. In a very
large proportion of them there was every probability of additional
issue. To allow for this probability, we may safely add one to the
average which we have already obtained, and rate the fecundity of a
noble marriage in England at 5. 3;--higher than the fecundity which Mr
Sadler assigns to the people of the United States. Even if we do not
make this allowance, the average fecundity of marriages of peers is
higher by one-fifth than the average fecundity of marriages throughout
the kingdom. And this is the sterile class! This is the class which
"Nature has interdicted from increasing! " The evidence to which Mr
Sadler has himself appealed proves that his principle is false,--utterly
false,--wildly and extravagantly false. It proves that a class, living
during half of every year in the most crowded population in the world,
breeds faster than those who live in the country;--that the class which
enjoys the greatest degree of luxury and ease breeds faster than the
class which undergoes labour and privation. To talk a little in Mr
Sadler's style, we must own that we are ourselves surprised at the
results which our examination of the peerage has brought out. We
certainly should have thought that the habits of fashionable life, and
long residence even in the most airy parts of so great a city as London,
would have been more unfavourable to the fecundity of the higher orders
than they appear to be.
Peerages, it is true, often become extinct. But it is quite clear, from
what we have stated, that this is not because peeresses are barren.
There is no difficulty in discovering what the causes really are. In the
first place, most of the titles of our nobles are limited to heirs male;
so that, though the average fecundity of a noble marriage is upwards
of five, yet, for the purpose of keeping up a peerage, it cannot be
reckoned at much more than two and a half. Secondly, though the peers
are, as Mr Sadler says, a marrying class, the younger sons of peers are
decidedly not a marrying class; so that a peer, though he has at least
as great a chance of having a son as his neighbours, has less chance
than they of having a collateral heir.
We have now disposed, we think, of Mr Sadler's principle of population.
Our readers must, by this time, be pretty well satisfied as to his
qualifications for setting up theories of his own.
We will, therefore,
present them with a few instances of the skill and fairness which he
shows when he undertakes to pull down the theories of other men. The
doctrine of Mr Malthus, that population, if not checked by want,
by vice, by excessive mortality, or by the prudent self-denial of
individuals, would increase in a geometric progression, is, in Mr
Sadler's opinion, at once false and atrocious.
"It may at once be denied," says he, "that human increase proceeds
geometrically; and for this simple but decisive reason, that the
existence of a geometrical ratio of increase in the works of nature
is neither true nor possible. It would fling into utter confusion all
order, time, magnitude, and space. "
This is as curious a specimen of reasoning as any that has been offered
to the world since the days when theories were founded on the principle
that nature abhors a vacuum. We proceed a few pages further, however;
and we then find that geometric progression is unnatural only in those
cases in which Mr Malthus conceives that it exists; and that, in all
cases in which Mr Malthus denies the existence of a geometric ratio,
nature changes sides, and adopts that ratio as the rule of increase.
Mr Malthus holds that subsistence will increase only in an arithmetical
ratio. "As far as nature has to do with the question," says Mr Sadler,
"men might, for instance, plant twice the number of peas, and breed
from a double number of the same animals, with equal prospect of their
multiplication. " Now, if Mr Sadler thinks that, as far as nature is
concerned, four sheep will double as fast as two, and eight as fast as
four, how can he deny that the geometrical ratio of increase does
exist in the works of nature? Or has he a definition of his own for
geometrical progression, as well as for inverse proportion?
Mr Malthus, and those who agree with him, have generally referred to
the United States, as a country in which the human race increases in a
geometrical ratio, and have fixed on thirty-five years as the term in
which the population of that country doubles itself. Mr Sadler contends
that it is physically impossible for a people to double in twenty-five
years; nay, that thirty-five years is far too short a period,--that
the Americans do not double by procreation in less than forty-seven
years,--and that the rapid increase of their numbers is produced by
emigration from Europe.
Emigration has certainly had some effect in increasing the population of
the United States. But so great has the rate of that increase been that,
after making full allowance for the effect of emigration, there will be
a residue, attributable to procreation alone, amply sufficient to double
the population in twenty-five years.
Mr Sadler states the results of the four censuses as follows:--
"There were, of white inhabitants, in the whole of the United States in
1790, 3,093,111; in 1800, 4,309,656; in 1810, 5,862,093; and in 1820,
7,861,710. The increase, in the first term, being 39 per cent. ; that in
the second, 36 per cent. ; and that in the third and last, 33 per cent.
It is superfluous to say, that it is utterly impossible to deduce
the geometric theory of human increase, whatever be the period of
duplication, from such terms as these. "
Mr Sadler is a bad arithmetician. The increase in the last term is
not as he states it, 33 per cent. , but more than 34 per cent. Now, an
increase of 32 per cent. in ten years, is more than sufficient to double
the population in twenty-five years. And there is, we think, very strong
reason to believe that the white population of the United States does
increase by 32 per cent. every ten years.
Our reason is this. There is in the United States a class of persons
whose numbers are not increased by emigration,--the negro slaves. During
the interval which elapsed between the census of 1810 and the census
of 1820, the change in their numbers must have been produced by
procreation, and by procreation alone. Their situation, though much
happier than that of the wretched beings who cultivate the sugar
plantations of Trinidad and Demerara, cannot be supposed to be more
favourable to health and fecundity than that of free labourers. In
1810, the slave-trade had been but recently abolished; and there were
in consequence many more male than female slaves,--a circumstance, of
course, very unfavourable to procreation. Slaves are perpetually passing
into the class of freemen; but no freeman ever descends into servitude;
so that the census will not exhibit the whole effect of the procreation
which really takes place.
We find, by the census of 1810, that the number of slaves in the Union
was then 1,191,000. In 1820, they had increased to 1,538,000. That is
to say, in ten years, they had increased 29 per cent. --within three
per cent. of that rate of increase which would double their numbers
in twenty-five years. We may, we think, fairly calculate that, if the
female slaves had been as numerous as the males, and if no manumissions
had taken place, the census of the slave population would have exhibited
an increase of 32 per cent. in ten years.
If we are right in fixing on 32 per cent. as the rate at which the white
population of America increases by procreation in ten years, it will
follow that, during the last ten years of the eighteenth century, nearly
one-sixth of the increase was the effect of emigration; from 1800 to
1810, about one-ninth; and from 1810 to 1820, about one-seventeenth.
This is what we should have expected; for it is clear that, unless the
number of emigrants be constantly increasing, it must, as compared with
the resident population, be relatively decreasing. The number of persons
added to the population of the United States by emigration, between 1810
and 1820, would be nearly 120,000. From the data furnished by Mr Sadler
himself, we should be inclined to think that this would be a fair
estimate.
"Dr Seybert says, that the passengers to ten of the principal ports of
the United States, in the year 1817, amounted to 22,235; of whom 11,977
were from Great Britain and Ireland; 4164 from Germany and Holland; 1245
from France; 58 from Italy, 2901 from the British possessions in North
America; 1569 from the West Indies; and from all other countries, 321.
These, however, we may conclude, with the editor of Styles's Register,
were far short of the number that arrived. "
We have not the honour of knowing either Dr Seybert or the editor of
Styles's Register. We cannot, therefore, decide on their respective
claims to our confidence so peremptorily as Mr Sadler thinks fit to do.
Nor can we agree to what Mr Sadler very gravely assigns as a reason for
disbelieving Dr Seyberts's testimony. "Such accounts," he says, "if not
wilfully exaggerated, must always fall short of the truth. " It would be
a curious question of casuistry to determine what a man ought to do in a
case in which he cannot tell the truth except by being guilty of
wilful exaggeration. We will, however, suppose, with Mr Sadler, that Dr
Seybert, finding himself compelled to choose between two sins, preferred
telling a falsehood to exaggerating; and that he has consequently
underrated the number of emigrants. We will take it at double of the
Doctor's estimate, and suppose that, in 1817, 45,000 Europeans crossed
to the United States. Now, it must be remembered that the year 1817 was
a year of the severest and most general distress all over Europe,--a
year of scarcity everywhere, and of cruel famine in some places. There
can, therefore, be no doubt that the emigration of 1817 was very far
above the average, probably more than three times that of an ordinary
year. Till the year 1815, the war rendered it almost impossible to
emigrate to the United States either from England or from the Continent.
If we suppose the average emigration of the remaining years to have been
16,000, we shall probably not be much mistaken. In 1818 and 1819,
the number was certainly much beyond that average; in 1815 and 1816,
probably much below it. But, even if we were to suppose that, in every
year from the peace to 1820, the number of emigrants had been as high as
we have supposed it to be in 1817, the increase by procreation among the
white inhabitants of the United States would still appear to be about 30
per cent. in ten years.
Mr Sadler acknowledges that Cobbett exaggerates the number of emigrants
when he states it at 150,000 a year. Yet even this estimate, absurdly
great as it is, would not be sufficient to explain the increase of the
population of the United States on Mr Sadler's principles. He is, he
tells us, "convinced that doubling in 35 years is a far more rapid
duplication than ever has taken place in that country from procreation
only. " An increase of 20 per cent. in ten years, by procreation, would
therefore be the very utmost that he would allow to be possible. We have
already shown, by reference to the census of the slave population, that
this doctrine is quite absurd. And, if we suppose it to be sound, we
shall be driven to the conclusion that above eight hundred thousand
people emigrated from Europe to the United States in a space of little
more than five years. The whole increase of the white population from
1810 to 1820 was within a few hundreds of 2,000,000. If we are to
attribute to procreation only 20 per cent. on the number returned by the
census of 1810, we shall have about 830,000 persons to account for in
some other way;--and to suppose that the emigrants who went to America
between the peace of 1815 and the census of 1820, with the children who
were born to them there, would make up that number, would be the height
of absurdity.
We could say much more; but we think it quite unnecessary at present. We
have shown that Mr Sadler is careless in the collection of facts,--that
he is incapable of reasoning on facts when he has collected them,--that
he does not understand the simplest terms of science,--that he has
enounced a proposition of which he does not know the meaning,--that
the proposition which he means to enounce, and which he tries to prove,
leads directly to all those consequences which he represents as impious
and immoral,--and that, from the very documents to which he has himself
appealed, it may be demonstrated that his theory is false. We may,
perhaps, resume the subject when his next volume appears. Meanwhile, we
hope that he will delay its publication until he has learned a little
arithmetic, and unlearned a great deal of eloquence.
*****
SADLER'S REFUTATION REFUTED. (January 1831. )
"A Refutation of an Article in the Edinburgh Review (No.
CII. ) entitled, 'Sadler's Law of Population, and disproof of
Human Superfecundity;' containing also Additional Proofs of
the Principle enunciated in that Treatise, founded on the
Censuses of different Countries recently published. " By
Michael Thomas Sadler, M. P. 8vo. London: 1830.
"Before anything came out against my Essay, I was told I must prepare
myself for a storm coming against it, it being resolved by some men
that it was necessary that book of mine should, as it is phrased, be run
down. "--John Locke.
We have, in violation of our usual practice, transcribed Mr Sadler's
title-page from top to bottom, motto and all. The parallel implied
between the Essay on the Human Understanding and the Essay on
Superfecundity is exquisitely laughable. We can match it, however, with
mottoes as ludicrous. We remember to have heard of a dramatic piece,
entitled "News from Camperdown," written soon after Lord Duncan's
victory, by a man once as much in his own good graces as Mr Sadler is,
and now as much forgotten as Mr Sadler will soon be, Robert Heron. His
piece was brought upon the stage, and damned, "as it is phrased," in
the second act; but the author, thinking that it had been unfairly and
unjustly "run down," published it, in order to put his critics to shame,
with this motto from Swift: "When a true genius appears in the world,
you may know him by this mark--that the dunces are all in confederacy
against him. " We remember another anecdote, which may perhaps be
acceptable to so zealous a churchman as Mr Sadler. A certain Antinomian
preacher, the oracle of a barn, in a county of which we do not think it
proper to mention the name, finding that divinity was not by itself a
sufficiently lucrative profession, resolved to combine with it that of
dog-stealing. He was, by ill-fortune, detected in several offences of
this description, and was in consequence brought before two justices,
who, in virtue of the powers given them by an act of parliament,
sentenced him to a whipping for each theft. The degrading punishment
inflicted on the pastor naturally thinned the flock; and the poor man
was in danger of wanting bread. He accordingly put forth a handbill
solemnly protesting his innocence, describing his sufferings, and
appealing to the Christian charity of the public; and to his pathetic
address he prefixed this most appropriate text: "Thrice was I beaten
with rods. --St Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians. " He did not perceive
that, though St Paul had been scourged, no number of whippings, however
severe, will of themselves entitle a man to be considered as an apostle.
Mr Sadler seems to us to have fallen into a somewhat similar error. He
should remember that, though Locke may have been laughed at, so has Sir
Claudius Hunter; and that it takes something more than the laughter of
all the world to make a Locke.
The body of this pamphlet by no means justifies the parallel so modestly
insinuated on the title-page. Yet we must own that, though Mr Sadler
has not risen to the level of Locke, he has done what was almost as
difficult, if not as honourable--he has fallen below his own. He is at
best a bad writer. His arrangement is an elaborate confusion. His style
has been constructed, with great care, in such a manner as to produce
the least possible effect by means of the greatest possible number of
words. Aspiring to the exalted character of a Christian philosopher, he
can never preserve through a single paragraph either the calmness of a
philosopher or the meekness of a Christian. His ill-nature would make a
very little wit formidable. But, happily, his efforts to wound resemble
those of a juggler's snake. The bags of poison are full, but the fang is
wanting. In this foolish pamphlet, all the unpleasant peculiarities of
his style and temper are brought out in the strongest manner. He is from
the beginning to the end in a paroxysm of rage, and would certainly do
us some mischief if he knew how. We will give a single instance for the
present. Others will present themselves as we proceed. We laughed at
some doggerel verses which he cited, and which we, never having seen
them before, suspected to be his own. We are now sure that if the
principle on which Solomon decided a famous case of filiation were
correct, there can be no doubt as to the justice of our suspicion. Mr
Sadler, who, whatever elements of the poetical character he may lack,
possesses the poetical irritability in an abundance which might have
sufficed for Homer himself, resolved to retaliate on the person, who,
as he supposed, had reviewed him. He has, accordingly, ransacked
some collection of college verses, in the hope of finding, among the
performances of his supposed antagonist, something as bad as his own.
And we must in fairness admit that he has succeeded pretty well. We must
admit that the gentleman in question sometimes put into his exercises,
at seventeen, almost as great nonsense as Mr Sadler is in the habit of
putting into his books at sixty.
Mr Sadler complains that we have devoted whole pages to mere abuse of
him. We deny the charge. We have, indeed, characterised, in terms of
just reprehension, that spirit which shows itself in every part of his
prolix work. Those terms of reprehension we are by no means inclined
to retract; and we conceive that we might have used much stronger
expressions, without the least offence either to truth or to decorum.
There is a limit prescribed to us by our sense of what is due to
ourselves. But we think that no indulgence is due to Mr Sadler. A writer
who distinctly announces that he has not conformed to the candour of the
age--who makes it his boast that he expresses himself throughout with
the greatest plainness and freedom--and whose constant practice proves
that by plainness and freedom he means coarseness and rancour--has
no right to expect that others shall remember courtesies which he has
forgotten, or shall respect one who has ceased to respect himself.
Mr Sadler declares that he has never vilified Mr Malthus personally,
and has confined himself to attacking the doctrines which that gentleman
maintains. We should wish to leave that point to the decision of all
who have read Mr Sadler's book, or any twenty pages of it. To quote
particular instances of a temper which penetrates and inspires the whole
work, is to weaken our charge. Yet, that we may not be suspected of
flinching, we will give two specimens,--the two first which occur to our
recollection. "Whose minister is it that speaks thus? " says Mr Sadler,
after misrepresenting in a most extraordinary manner, though, we are
willing to believe, unintentionally, one of the positions of Mr Malthus.
"Whose minister is it that speaks thus? That of the lover and avenger of
little children? " Again, Mr Malthus recommends, erroneously perhaps, but
assuredly from humane motives, that alms, when given, should be given
very sparingly. Mr Sadler quotes the recommendation, and adds the
following courteous comment:--"The tender mercies of the wicked are
cruel. " We cannot think that a writer who indulges in these indecent and
unjust attacks on professional and personal character has any right to
complain of our sarcasms on his metaphors and rhymes.
We will now proceed to examine the reply which Mr Sadler has thought
fit to make to our arguments. He begins by attacking our remarks on the
origin of evil. They are, says he, too profound for common apprehension;
and he hopes that they are too profound for our own. That they seem
profound to him we can well believe. Profundity, in its secondary as in
its primary sense, is a relative term. When Grildrig was nearly drowned
in the Brobdingnagian cream-jug he doubtless thought it very deep. But
to common apprehension our reasoning would, we are persuaded, appear
perfectly simple.
The theory of Mr Malthus, says Mr Sadler, cannot be true, because it
asserts the existence of a great and terrible evil, and is therefore
inconsistent with the goodness of God. We answer thus. We know that
there are in the world great and terrible evils. In spite of these
evils, we believe in the goodness of God. Why may we not then continue
to believe in his goodness, though another evil should be added to the
list?
How does Mr Sadler answer this? Merely by telling us, that we are too
wicked to be reasoned with. He completely shrinks from the question; a
question, be it remembered, not raised by us--a question which we should
have felt strong objections to raising unnecessarily--a question put
forward by himself, as intimately connected with the subject of his
two ponderous volumes. He attempts to carp at detached parts of our
reasoning on the subject. With what success he carries on this guerilla
war after declining a general action with the main body of our argument
our readers shall see.
"The Reviewer sends me to Paley, who is, I confess, rather more
intelligible on the subject, and who, fortunately, has decided the very
point in dispute. I will first give the words of the Reviewer, who, when
speaking of my general argument regarding the magnitude of the evils,
moral and physical, implied in the theory I oppose, sums up his ideas
thus:--'Mr Sadler says, that it is not a light or transient evil, but a
great and permanent evil. What then? The question of the origin of evil
is a question of aye or no,--not a question of MORE or LESS. ' But what
says Paley? His express rule is this, that 'when we cannot resolve all
appearances into benevolence of design, we make the FEW give place to
the MANY, the LITTLE to the GREAT; that we take our judgment from a
large and decided preponderancy. ' Now in weighing these two authorities,
directly at issue on this point, I think there will be little trouble
in determining which we shall make 'to give place;' or, if we 'look to
a large and decided preponderancy' of either talent, learning, or
benevolence, from whom we shall 'take our judgment. ' The effrontery, or,
to speak more charitably, the ignorance of a reference to Paley on this
subject, and in this instance, is really marvellous. "
Now, does not Mr Sadler see that the very words which he quotes from
Paley contain in themselves a refutation of his whole argument? Paley
says, indeed, as every man in his senses would say, that in a certain
case, which he has specified, the more and the less come into question.
But in what case? "When we CANNOT resolve all appearances into the
benevolence of design. " It is better that there should be a little
evil than a great deal of evil. This is self-evident. But it is also
self-evident, that no evil is better than a little evil. Why, then, is
there any evil? It is a mystery which we cannot solve. It is a mystery
which Paley, by the very words which Mr Sadler has quoted, acknowledges
himself unable to solve; and it is because he cannot solve that mystery
that he proceeds to take into consideration the more and the less.
Believing in the divine goodness, we must necessarily believe that the
evils which exist are necessary to avert greater evils. But what those
greater evils are, we do not know. How the happiness of any part of the
sentient creation would be in any respect diminished if, for example,
children cut their teeth without pain, we cannot understand. The case
is exactly the same with the principle of Mr Malthus. If superfecundity
exists, it exists, no doubt, because it is a less evil than some other
evil which otherwise would exist. Can Mr Sadler prove that this is an
impossibility?
One single expression which Mr Sadler employs on this subject is
sufficient to show how utterly incompetent he is to discuss it. "On the
Christian hypothesis," says he, "no doubt exists as to the origin of
evil. " He does not, we think, understand what is meant by the origin
of evil. The Christian Scriptures profess to give no solution of that
mystery. They relate facts: but they leave the metaphysical question
undetermined. They tell us that man fell; but why he was not so
constituted as to be incapable of falling, or why the Supreme Being has
not mitigated the consequences of the Fall more than they actually have
been mitigated, the Scriptures did not tell us, and, it may without
presumption be said, could not tell us, unless we had been creatures
different from what we are. There is something, either in the nature of
our faculties or in the nature of the machinery employed by us for the
purpose of reasoning, which condemns us, on this and similar subjects,
to hopeless ignorance. Man can understand these high matters only by
ceasing to be man, just as a fly can understand a lemma of Newton only
by ceasing to be a fly. To make it an objection to the Christian system
that it gives us no solution of these difficulties, is to make it an
objection to the Christian system that it is a system formed for human
beings. Of the puzzles of the Academy, there is not one which does not
apply as strongly to Deism as to Christianity, and to Atheism as to
Deism. There are difficulties in everything. Yet we are sure that
something must be true.
If revelation speaks on the subject of the origin of evil it speaks
only to discourage dogmatism and temerity. In the most ancient, the most
beautiful, and the most profound of all works on the subject, the Book
of Job, both the sufferer who complains of the divine government, and
the injudicious advisers who attempt to defend it on wrong principles,
are silenced by the voice of supreme wisdom, and reminded that the
question is beyond the reach of the human intellect. St Paul silences
the supposed objector, who strives to force him into controversy, in
the same manner. The church has been, ever since the apostolic times,
agitated by this question, and by a question which is inseparable from
it, the question of fate and free-will. The greatest theologians and
philosophers have acknowledged that these things were too high for them,
and have contended themselves with hinting at what seemed to be the most
probable solution. What says Johnson? "All our effort ends in belief
that for the evils of life there is some good reason, and in confession
that the reason cannot be found. " What says Paley? "Of the origin of
evil no universal solution has been discovered. I mean no solution which
reaches to all cases of complaint. --The consideration of general laws,
although it may concern the question of the origin of evil very nearly,
which I think it does, rests in views disproportionate to our faculties,
and in a knowledge which we do not possess. It serves rather to account
for the obscurity of the subject, than to supply us with distinct
answers to our difficulties.
