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but is it not infinitely better to go to sleep for half an hour than to go on "noodling all day," in a nerveless and semi-superannuated state? The inhabitants of Spain and of South America* are a wise and a provident people. They enjoy their siesta, and sleep away the dull and sultry hours of their existence, thereby digesting their food, and enjoying their health, with infinitely more comfort. In sleeping, as in eating and drinking, we must consult and humour our habits and inclinations; but we see no reason why we should not administer a little wholesome advice touching the mode in which those said habits and feelings should be indulged.

"Le sommeil "--we are informed-" suspend toutes les fonctions il ne sera pas prudent de s'y livrer avant que la digestion stomacale soit achevée; elle dure, comme nous l'avons dit, environ quatre heures... Un homme adulte doit dormir six heures au moins et huit heures au plus; les personnes faibles, les femmes, les enfans dont la sensibilité est plus exquise, doivent dormir de sept à neuf heures. . . En général les personnes qui ont une occupation mentale, les hommes de cabinet, doivent dormir un peu plus que celles qui exercent seulement leur corps. .. La position la plus favorable pour se livrer au sommeil, est d'être étendu horizontalement, la tête un peu relevée. Il est indifférent pour une personne qui se porte bien, d'être sur le côté droit, ou sur le gauche, ou sur le dos; le décubitus sur le côté droit favorise le passage des alimens de l'estomac dans les intestins; mais nous avons dit que l'on ne devait se coucher qu'après la digestion stomacale; celui sur le côté gauche nuit, dit-on, aux mouvemens du cœur," &c. &c.

In addition to this, we would wish to inculcate one rule, the observance of which is not without benefit. This is to sleep in a room as large, as lofty, and as airy as possible, and in a bed but little encumbered with curtains. The lungs must respire, and the blood must circulate during sleep as well as at any other time; and it is of great importance that the air of the bed-chamber should be as pure as possible. In summer curtains are certainly superfluous, and in winter we should do much better without the impervious skreen, in which our beds are so commonly enveloped. In summer great advantage may be derived from sleeping in some of the villages near town, and at a sufficient distance from its smoke and impurities.

POPULATION-SENIOR VERSUS MALTHUS.†

ALTHOUGH the subject of population may not seem especially fitted for the pages of our periodical, yet as we have pledged ourselves, in our monthly labours, to mingle the useful with the pleasant, our readers have no right to quarrel with an occasional service of wholesome food,

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*See Captain Head's Rough Notes,' one of the best and most amusing books which has been written concerning that interesting part of the world.

Two Lectures on Population, delivered before the University of Oxford, in Easter Term, 1828, by Nassau William Senior.

even although unspiced with any ingredient very savoury to the palate. The permanent amelioration of all ranks of society-and especially the happiness of the lower ranks-hinges, besides, so materially on the universal reception and practical influence of the true doctrine of population, that we cannot but think the importance of the subject claims for it a degree of attention which might otherwise-with some show of justice-be denied to the dryness of its details.

The lectures on this very prolific subject, which are noticed at the head of this article, are the third publication from the chair of Political Economy in the University of Oxford. According to the terms on which this lectureship is founded, one lecture at least must be published every year ;-a regulation intended to secure, amidst the temptations to indolence which beset our University chairs, the bonâ fide exertions of the Professor, and, at the same time, to make the public acquainted with the nature of the doctrines taught.

Mr. Senior's introductory lecture was published in 1827; and last year were published Three Lectures on the Transmission of the Precious Metals from Country to Country, and the Mercantile Theory of Wealth.' These publications have earned among political economists a large share of approbation. Although not distinguished by any extraordinary show of research, or brilliancy of execution, they are nevertheless characterized, throughout, by uniform elegance and great soundness of judgment; and form a very favourable specimen of the excellence of the Oxford course. The two Lectures on Population which Mr. Senior has chosen for this year's publication, are highly enhanced, by having appended to them a correspondence upon the subject, between the author and Mr. Malthus. It will be our object to canvass, as briefly as possible, the subject of these lectures, and to pass judgment on the merits of this correspondence.

Those of our readers who are acquainted with the rudiments of political economy, have, of course, considered the question of population. Yet, for the sake of those who have paid less attention to the subject than its importance merits, a short statement of its acknowledged principles may be tolerated. It is now upwards of thirty years since Mr. Malthus published the first edition of his celebrated Essay, which may be considered as having set the subject of population, as a question of political economy, for ever at rest. The evils of superabundant procreation had been noticed and commented upon by different writers, before Mr. Malthus directed his attention to the subject; but he has the high merit of having been the first to form a just estimate of their magnitude, and to be hence led to trace the principle of population to its consequences, and to imbody into the moral code of political economy those important maxims of practical wisdom which result immediately from the investigation.

The details embraced by Mr. Malthus's Essay are profusely extensive and multifarious. Indeed, there is, throughout the work, much of mere talk mingled with the requisite discussions. In as far as the logic of the question is concerned, it is reducible to very narrow limits; whilst all the statistical details and collateral investigations requisite for illustrating the principle fully, and placing it in permanent relief before the gaze of the public, might have been given with far

greater effect, in a selected and condensed form, within the compass of a tenth part of its present bulky dimensions. What constitutes, however, the great practical value of the Essay on Population' is the exhibition, throughout, of a vein of sober but fervent philanthropy, which aims at teaching the thoughtless multipliers of misery the gross error of their imprudent proceedings, and anticipates the gradual amelioration of the condition of the human race,—from the increasing influence, throughout the lower grades of society, of those prudential considerations which result from a right understanding of his favourite doctrine. The main propositions which Mr. Malthus establishes by a copious induction of historical and statistical details, are,—

I. That population invariably increases when the means of subsistence increase, unless prevented by powerful and obvious checks; and,

II. That these checks, and the checks which keep the population down to the level of the means of subsistence, are moral restraint, vice, and misery.

That population has a tendency to increase with progressive rapidity is sufficiently obvious, without the evidence afforded by statistical details. Those who view the matter physiologically consider the number ten as a fair amount of offspring for a human pair, reared under favourable circumstances. Now, making ample allowance for casualties of every description, by assuming four as the average number that would be reared to maturity by every human pair, under circumstances where marriage and its results were unobstructed by any of the usual checks, it is evident,-allowing the thirtieth year to be the average limit of fecundity, that population would double itself in every successive period of thirty years. The population of North America, it is proved by authentic documents, has doubled itself repeatedly in twenty-five years; and since, under the circumstances, this ascertained rate of increase may be regarded as resulting from a fair experiment, it has been assumed by political economists as the natural rate according to which population will increase, where adequate subsis tence is procurable by ordinary exertions. At this rate any given population at the end of one hundred years will have been increased by fifteen times its original numbers. Such a rate of increase it is easy to perceive would in the course of a few centuries, were it suffered to proceed unchecked, crowd every spot of earth on the surface of the globe with human beings,-whose procreative powers would be adequate to furnish an equally dense population for another globe of the same dimensions in the next five and twenty years. All this is abundantly plain. How comes it, then, that centuries have rolled on, and population has been allowed to ply as it can the business of increase, and yet the habitable parts of our earth are only partially peopled? It is in answering satisfactorily this question, that the great merit of Mr. Malthus's Essay consists. The vegetable products of the earth, which ultimately constitute the food of human beings, are fitted by their organization for multiform re-production. Wheat, for instance, re-produces itself in so high a ratio, that the produce of a single acre, as is observed by Mr. Senior, might cover the globe in fourteen years. It is known, therefore, that the rate of increase accord

ing to which food is capable of being produced-in as far as this capability depends upon vegetable organization-is far higher than the highest rate which regulates the fecundity of the human race. Could food, therefore, be produced as abundantly as its capacity of re-production admits of, there would be no hinderance from want of food to the indefinite multiplication of the human species. The multiplication of food, however, is limited by the definite quantity of land upon the surface of the earth. Over any given surface population may be expected to go on increasing, so long as the produce raised by the united labours of the people is found to be fully sufficient to support the existing community. And the numbers will, of course, become stationary, when the utmost labour bestowed upon the soil can extort no more than a bare subsistence to the existing population. Now that such a stationary state must very soon be arrived at, even on the most fertile spots of the earth, is abundantly evident from the limited capabilities of production possessed by the soil, compared with the ceaseless tendency of mankind to multiply their numbers. When once the best soils are brought fully under cultivation, the returns got by the continued application of a given quantity of labour to inferior soils, or of equal additional quantities to the same soil, are well known to decrease continually; so that there is in every quality of soil a maximum of productive energy resulting from the application of labour,-such, that an additional return will not repay the expense of the additional labour requisite for its production. Any given quantity of land, therefore, must in the progress of cultivation arrive at a point where its produce will admit of no further augmentation, so as to be available to the support of additional labourers. And what is true of any given portion of land is true of the whole earth. So that man in his career of multiplying and replenishing the earth is at length stopped short by the stern law of necessity, which proclaims with irresistible authority," hitherto shalt thou come and no farther."

When the subject is viewed thus, there can be no difference of opinion upon the question,-whether population has a tendency to increase faster than food, or food than population. But in reviewing the history of the human race, it so happens that, as mankind has advanced in civilization, the means of subsistence are found to bear a higher ratio to their numbers than in the earlier stages of society. Food is far more precariously and less plentifully obtained in the hunting and fishing than in the agricultural stages, and with comparatively greater abundance in those of the agricultural stages which are further advanced than in ruder times. It is from having observed that there is thus less of comparative poverty in the advancing stages of society, that Mr. Senior has ventured to call in question the accuracy of the statement made in the main proposition of Mr. Malthus,-viz., That population has a tendency to increase faster than food ;-and to pronounce that the reverse of the proposition is true,-viz., That food has a tendency to increase faster than population.

The explanation of the facts which lead him to frame this proposition, Mr. Senior thinks he has found in the consideration-that the desire to better our condition is a more powerful principle than the

desire of marriage. "If it be conceded," he observes, "that there exists in the human race a natural tendency to rise from barbarism to civilization, and that the means of subsistence are proportionally more abundant in a civilized than in a savage state, and neither of the propositions can be denied; it must follow that there is a natural tendency in subsistence to increase in a greater ratio than population*."

The statement of his view of the matter, however, will be best exhibited by an extract from his first letter to Mr. Malthus. In stating his impression of Mr. Malthus's doctrine he proceeds thus :-“I conceive you to hold that an increase of population, in a greater ratio than that of subsistence, is a probable event only under peculiar circumstances. Such as those of America, where the knowledge of an old people has for a considerable time been applied to a continent previously almost unoccupied; or those of France, when the confiscation of the greater part of the land operated like an Agrarian law, and the conscription falling on bachelors only, made early marriage a precaution instead of an improvidence. But that in an old country, under wise institutions, in the absence in short of disturbing causes, though population is likely to increase, subsistence is likely to increase much faster. In short, that the condition of a people so circumstanced is more likely to be improved than deteriorated. If I am right in this view, the only difference between us is one of nomenclature. You would still say, that, in the absence of disturbing causes, population has a tendency to increase faster than food, because the comparative increase of the former is a mere compliance with our natural wishes; the comparative increase of the latter is all effort and self-denial. should still say, that, in the absence of disturbing causes, food has a tendency to increase faster than population, because, in fact, it has generally done so, and because I consider the desire of bettering our condition as natural a wish as the desire of marriaget."

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To this extract we feel great pleasure in subjoining the following portion of Mr. Malthus's able and conclusive reply:

"The meaning which I intended to convey by the expression to which you object was, that population was always ready and inclined to increase faster than food, if the checks which repressed it were removed; and that though these checks might be such as to prevent population from advancing upon subsistence, or even to keep it a greater distance behind, yet that, whether population were actually increasing faster than food, or food faster than population, it was true that, except in new colonies favourably circumstanced, population was always pressing against food, and was always ready to start off at a faster rate than that at which the food was actually increasing.

"This constant pressure of population against food, which I have always considered as the essence of the principle which I endeavoured to explain in my work, appeared to me to be distinctly proved by the universally acknowledged fact, that whenever improvements in agriculture, or the effects of some destructive plague, loosened the restraints which kept down the population, it made a start forward at a greater rate than usual; and that further, notwithstanding the operation of the desire of bettering our condition, there were the strongest reasons to • Page 49. † Appendix, p. 57.

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