OF POPULATION.
WE have defined political economy, as being the in vestigation of the means, by which the greatest number of men in a given state may participate in the highest de gree of physical happiness, so far as it depends on govern ment. Two elements, indeed, must always be received in connexion by the legislature; the increase of happiness in intensity, and the diffusion of it among all classes of subjects. It is thus that political economy, on a great scale, becomes the theory of beneficence ; and- that every thing which does not in the long run concern the happiness of men belongs not to this science.
The human race originating in a single family, has mul tiplied, and spread itself by degrees over the globe ; and much time was of course required, before it could be adjusted to the means of subsistence, which different parts of this globe are capable of supplying. We see this work of nature repeated in new countries, or in a colony estab lished in a desert region. A state which passes from bar barism to a higher stage of civilization, cannot all on a sudden become covered with as many inhabitants as it may comfortably support : as the earth has been wasted several times; as the greater part of its provinces has been by turns plunged into a state of desolation, to arise from it slowly afterwards, we have often had the opportunity of witnessing this spectacle of a growing population. We are accustomed to consider it as the mark of prosperity and good government ; and hence our law and constitution all tend to favour this increase, though to increase the symptoms of prosperity is very different from increasing prosperity itself.
Nature has attended to the multiplication of races with a kind of profusion. Although that of tnan is among the slowest in its progress, it may increase, when all circum stances are favourable, far more quickly than any of our observations indicate. When every man has a great in terest in bringing up a family, and has the means of doing so; when all marry, and all as young as nature permits; when they continue to have children till the approaches of old age, their posterity increases so as very quickly to occupy all the allotted space. In several countries, in
consequence of the social organization, not above a fourth part of the individuals marry ; the rest grow old in celibacy. Yet this fourth is of itself sufficient to keep up the popula tion at the same level. If their brothers and sisters could also marry with the same advantage, the populatiA would be quadrupled in a single generation.
Thus, every nation very soon arrives at the degree of population which it can attain without changing its social institutions. It soon arrives at counting as many indi viduals as it can maintain with a revenue so limited, and so distributed. If a great transient calamity, a war, a pes tilence, a famine, have left a great void in the population, should those events be followed by a .period of general security and comfort, this renewing power of human gene ration is speedily developed ; and an observer is astonished to see how few years are required to obliterate all traces of a scourge, which seemed to have unpeopled the earth. But, on the other hand, so soon as this term has been reached, a greater increase of the population is a national calamity ; the earth soon consumes those whom it cannot feed. The more numerous births are, the more will mor tality display its ravages, to maintain constantly the same level ; and this mortality, the effect of misery and suffering, is preceded by the lengthened punishment, not of those who perish only, but of those who have struggled with them for existence.
In every country, it is essential to know well those dif ferent periods of increase, of stagnation and decline, in order to adapt the laws, and all social institutions, to the circumstances ; and not, as has too frequently been done, to hasten, with all our efforts, the destruction we ought most to fear.