The multiplication of vegetables follows a geometrical progression much more rapid still than the multiplication of cattle. In common tillage, corn increases five-fold in the course of a year; potatoes tenfold in the same space of time. The latter vegetable, to produce a given quan tity of food, scarcely requires the tenth part of the ground which corn would occupy. Vet even in the most popu lous countries, men are very far from having planted all their corn fields with potatoes; from having sown all their pasturages with corn; from having converted into pas turage all their woods, all their deserts abandoned to hunt ing. Those things are a fund of reserve remaining to every nation ; and, by means of them, if a new demand for labour should suddenly cause the population to increase as rapidly as the nature of man can permit, the multiplication of food would still precede it.
The demand for labour which the capital of a country can pay, and not the quantity of food which that country can produce, regulates the population. In political eco nomy nothing is reckoned a demand but what is accompa nied with a sufficient compensation for the thing demand ed. If no fault has been committed on the part of go vernment, if no dangerous prejudice has been diffused among the people, very few men will think of marrying, and burdening their hands with the subsistence of indi viduals unable to procure it themselves, till they have first acquired an establishment. But whenever a new demand for labour raises their wages, and thus increases their re venue, they hasten to satisfy one of the first laws of nature, and seek in marriage a new source of happiness. If the rise of wages was but momentary ; if, for example, the fa vours granted by government suddenly give a great de velopment to a species of manufacture, which, after its commencement, cannot be maintained, the workmen, whose remuneration was double during some time, will all have married to profit by their opulence ; and then, at the moment when their trade declines, families dispropor tionate to the actual demand of labour will be plunged into the most dreadful wretchedness.
It is those variations in the demand for labour, this sort of revolution so frequent in the lives of poor artisans, that gives to the state a superabundant population. Already brought into the world, that population finds no longer any room to exist there; it is always ready to be satisfied with the lowest terms on which it may he permitted to live. There is no condition so hard that men are not found ready to engage in it voluntarily. In some trades, the workmen are obliged to live in mud, exposed to continual nausea; in others, the labour engenders painful and inevi table maladies; several stupify the senses, degrade the body and the soul; several employ none but children, and after introducing into life, abandon to a horrible indigence the being they have form•..d. There are callings, in fine, which public opinion brands with infamy : there are some which deserve this condemnation. Yet the ranks are al
ways full ; and a miserable wage, scarce sufficient for ex istence, induces men to undergo so many evils. The reason is, society does not leave them any choice; they are compelled to be contented with this cruel lot, or not to live. The duty of governments to succour so much wretch edness cannot be doubtful, for they are almost always the cause of this wretched population's being created ; but, at the same time they ought not to forget that it is their part to save from indigence the miserable creatures alrea dy in existence, though at the same time discouraging them front perpetuating their race. Assistance given to the poor has often done the contrary.
Religious instruction has almost always strongly contri buted to destroy the equilibrium between the population and the demand for labour which is to give it subsistence. When questions of moral polity are introduced in a reli gious system, it almost constantly happens, thtt the cause of the precept is absolutely separated from the precept itself; and a rule, which should be modified by circumstances, be comes an invariable law. Religions began with the origin of the human race; and therefore at a time when the ra pid progress of population was every where desirable; their principles have not yet changed, now when the un limited increase of families has given birth only to beings, of necessity condemned to physical suffering or moral de gradation.
A Chinese knows no greater misfortune, no deeper hu miliation, than not to leave sons behind him to perform the funeral honours at his death. In almost all other creeds the indefinite increase of families has ever been represent ed as a blessing of heaven. On the other hand, whilst re ligion repressed irregularity of morals, it attached all mo rality of conduct to marriage, and washed away, by the nuptial benediction alone, whatever was reprehensible in the imprudence of him who inconsiderately contracted the bonds of paternity. 'Yet, how important soever purity of morals may be, the duties of a father towards those whom he brings into existence areof a still higher order. Children horn but for wretchedness, are also born but for vice. The happiness and the virtue of innocent and defenceless beings are thus sacrificed beforehand, to satisfy the passions of a day. The ardour of casuists in preaching up marriage to correct a fault ; the imprudence with which they recom mend husbands to shut their eyes upon the future, to en trust the fate of their children to Providence ; the igno rance of social order, which has induced them to erase chastity from the number of virtues proper in marriage, are causes which have been incessantly active in destroying the proportion which naturally would have established it self between the population and its means of existing.