Bane, a miserable, free-booter of 1600, located for twenty-five years in a cavern on the coast of Galloway, and reduced frequently to the most horrible shifts, even to cannabalism by famine, in that time, produced, from a single couple, 48 of a progeny, who were all captured and put to death at Edinburgh. Into the untroubled pool of fact and observation thus outspread, Mr Doubleday pitches the pebbles of his argument, circulating wider and wider the assertions, that, amongst classes enabled to luxuriate in habits of fulness, the law of decrease is strongly developed; that as men become lower in circumstances it diminishes; lower again, it becomes nothing; and at the zero of privation the opposite principle immediately appears, and thenceforward advances, in the ratio of the depletion and debility.

The author of this novel and singular theory professes to discern its workings amongst the largest bodies of men; amongst nations, and the population of great countries. He attempts, in accordance with it, to trace an exact correspondency betwixt their various states of populousness and the character of their ordinary subsistences. Taking each apart, country by country, he seeks also to discriminate betwixt the results to be found in different provinces of the same country where they happen to differ in their mode of living. In this manner he shows that, in Russia, where butchers' meat is a drug, and vegetable food a luxury, the number of inhabitants to the square league is trifling; that in Poland, France, Italy, and the Low Countries, where the diet is mixed but plentiful, population is moderately dense; whilst in India, in Ireland, and in China, where almost no animal food is eaten, population is excessively dense, and constant pauperism, with periodical famines, form prominent features in the history of these countries.

As a too familiar illustration of this remarkable coincidence of redundant poverty and population, we have Ireland—a country in the most deplorably destitute condition of any in Europe perhaps of any on the face of the globe. Of say eight millions of population, two

millions and a half are wandering mendicants. Absenteeism-the inefficiency of the poor-law-the alienation of Church benefices and tithes to England-and the poverty of the Romish Church-are the things which, in Mr Doubleday's estimation, preclude the amelioration of the popular sufferings from the ordinary sources of benevolence. But whatever weight may be due to these causes, this much is at least established by the returns of the Irish Registrar-General, that the density of the Irish population cannot be attributed, as is alleged by the followers of Malthus, to the prevalence of early and improvident marriages. From the details of the census of 1841, it appears that, taking males of all ages from 17 to 46, out of 1,642,704, only 690,086 were married; and out of 689,829, from 17 to 26, only 66,071 were so. Unless, therefore, we admit Mr Doubleday's theory, the problem of the Irish population clearly remains to be accounted for. Inhabiting mud cabins, without window or chimney, unless a hole in the wall or roof might be taken for both or either, the Irish peasant, shivering over a peat fire, and equally destitute of clothing as of aliment, lives solely upon potatoes. Notwithstanding a constant emigration going on from Ireland to the United States and the British settlements in America, to Scotland, to the West of England, to the British metropolis, and other large cities-notwithstanding the entry of considerable numbers into the army and navy, and the constant recurrence of malignant fevers arising from dearths and potato failures, whereby whole districts are thinned-notwithstanding all that the civil wars have done in the way of extermination, from the Reformation to the Protectorate, and throughout the revolutionary crisis of 1688, to keep down the numbers of this unhappy people these numbers have gone on increasing in a ratio of unparalleled rapidity. Some idea of this may be conceived from the fact that; at the close of the reign of Elizabeth, the remnant of the Irish people was estimated at 700,000. By the last

really "merrie England," and that there then was truly such a thing to be met with as its redoubtable "roast beef," the decay of which Mr Doubleday dedicates an entire chapter to commiserate; for "beef," he says,

"Is rare within these ox-less isles, Sometimes a goat upon their spits they put on, Sometimes a kid, and sometimes also mutton."

And yet in the same era, when "'twas merry in the hall"-from 1488 to 1650-from the commencement of the reign of Henry VII. to that of Charles II.-it can be proved by the statutebook, as well as from contemporary authority, that, instead of that increase of people which our present age exhibits along with its spread of poverty, there was then a decay of population accompanying an increase of luxury amongst all classes, particularly the labouring classes. Except, indeed, during some years of the reign of Elizabeth, nothing like want in an extended sense existed during all this time. Yet, Sir Frederick Eden mentions that depopulation was the theme of alarm with the Legislature for a century and a half from 1488.* He alludes especially to a statute of Henry VII.,† describing and imposing penalties for preventing the decay and pulling down of houses all over the country. And he alludes to another statute-one of Henry VIII.‡-reciting that “many and the most part of cities, boroughs, and towns corporate be fallen to ruin and decay." The statutes also prove this decay of houses to have been followed by a progressive diminution of population. A difficulty is here adroitly insinuated by Mr Doubleday, whether this decay of towns, and villages, and their inhabitants, can be explained upon any hypothesis of population hitherto attempted. He contrives, at all events, to show that these extraordinary facts cannot be accounted for on the assertion, that exuberance of food stimulates population. During the entire period in

question, luxury amongst the middling and plenty amongst the very lowest classes universally prevailed. The writers of the period describe an amazing ease and abundance prevalent throughout England, proofs of which also teem in the statutes; as, for instance, in the sumptuary laws, in the acts limiting the wages of labour, and repressing the luxuriousness of the people, and in the statutes describing the existing plenty in their preambles. Thus we have Chief

Justice Sir John Fortescue enlarging in his legal writings§ upon the wealth and ease of the country, as facts notorious to all the world. The statutory rates of wages and prices of necessaries from 1400 to 1650, as given by Fleetwood, || indicate a highly prosperous condition, extending through all classes. We see an artizan earning, in three or four days, as much as would buy a sheep, a calf, or a quarter of barley or malt; we see wine and beer the common drink of the people; butchers' meat the ordinary food of all; and dress universally of the best and most costly description. As compared with the present mode of living in England, the gross and abundant diet of those golden days is certainly curious and instructive. Beef, mutton, veal, and pork, were the chief and ordinary articles of food for the people; ale, wine, or sometimes cider, their common drink. So cheap must sustenance have been, that a princess, daughter of Edward III., the greatest of the Plantagenets, was assigned, as an allowance sufficient to clothe and keep herself, besides her gentlewoman, woman, girl, gentleman, yeoman, and three grooms, one pound eleven shillings per week! For the support of seven horses, horse furniture, &c., she had twenty-five pounds ten shillings and fourpence per annum ! On the other hand, the tea, coffee, and sugar of our times were luxuries nearly unattainable in those days. Whilst neither

tea nor coffee are once mentioned, a pound of sugar is recorded amongst the spiceries in the household book of Philip, third Lord Wharton,* in the 27th year of Elizabeth, at the enormous price (in the money of that time) of eighteen pence-half the price of the carcase of a sheep set down in the same page. Even culinary vegetables were so rare, that Katharine of Arragon had to send to Flanders for a salad; and carrots, turnips, parsnips, and celery, were always imported from Holland. This contrast betwixt the beef-eating era of the past and the "lenten entertainment" of the present, Mr Doubleday assays to improve, by trying to establish a recent decrease in the quantity of animal food consumed in England. He enters into calculations tending to show, that, whilst the number of inhabitants is swelling yearly, their use of butcher-meat is receding; that wine is drank only by the rich; that even malt liquor is comparatively scarce; and that the consumption of potatoes, as a substitute for more generous living, is rapidly increasing.

It does not, however, appear that the present is the only period of extreme populousness in English history. It has been supposed that, prior to the Norman Conquest, England had more inhabitants than she possessed in subsequent centuries, when the country was unquestionably richer. Harold brought 60,000 men to the battle of Stamford Bridge, where he encountered Harfager, the Norwegian prince, and Tosti, Earl of Northumberland, with an army not much inferior, partly composed of Englishmen. The English King's loss in this bloody encounter must have been severe; yet eighteen days afterwards, Harold led to the battle of Hastings another army superior in numbers, of whom 67,974 (a number almost incredible) were slain. many, therefore, as 150,000 Englishmen must have been engaged in conflict within these 20 days—an enormous force, unequalled in any action for many centuries afterwards, in or on the part of England. For instance, the entire

As

number of the famous army that embarked with. Edward III. against France was only 31,694 men. But then the simple manners of Saxon life had given place to a state of Norman magnificence and national prosperity never exceeded. Rapin relates that, at the close of the war, a wine merchant, a private citizen of London, entertained King Edward and his whole Court, along with the Kings of Cyprus, France, and Scotland, and all their attendants, in a most sumptuous manner. It is stated that about this period, fiftysix different kinds of foreign wine were drank in England.† Rapin, speaking of a later period, mentions that 50,000 men accompanied the equally celebrated French expedition of Henry V., which number seems to include the sailors of the fleet, for Monstrelet makes the fighting men of this army amount to only 26,000. And, even at the greatest English battle after Hastings the fight of Towton-with Englishmen engaged on both sides, and the fate of the kingdom at issue-it does not seem that above 108,000 of all sorts were assembled together. population, in this last instance, had neither regained the density it exhibited prior to the Norman Conquest, nor had it declined in the marked and visible way it began to do after the reign of Edward IV., 1483. Mr Doubleday, however, reasons approximately for a general diminution in the numbers of the people, extending from the Norman Conquest to the Reformation; up to which period, when the few poor of England were deprived of their share of the Church lands, he says that want was unheard of, and the name of pauper unknown. The Church was an easy landlord; rents were moderate, population limited, rates and taxes almost unknown, the pay of the labourer ample, and the profits of trade extraordinary. In these halcyon times, agricultural labourers, disdaining their statute wages of L.90 or L.100 ayear (in our money), repaired, in spite of prohibitory statutes, to the

The

walled towns and sea-ports, where higher rates were given. And if the fountains did not exactly spout claret in those days, there were at least 15,839 licensed houses in London for the sale of liquors in 1736; whereas there were only 5000 in 1835, for three times the population! Up to the Revolution of 1688, every township in England also had its tract of common proportioned to the size of the place; a safeguard of immense importance against destitution, because the use of these lands, estimated, by some writers, as a whole, at six millions of acres, fell mainly to the share of the poor. It is probable that at least they exceeded three millions of acres. The work of inclosing commons by authority of Parliament commenced under Queen Anne, when three inclosure bills were passed; George I. assented to 16; George II. to 223; and George III. to 3897. Numbers of inclosure bills have since been passed, and each of these bills, on an average, has alienated some hundreds of acres. The great extent of common lands in former times would, of itself, go far to prove the former impossibility of pauperism in England. Circumstances are now-a-days completely reversed. Fears of over-population prevail amongst us instead of the terrors of decay which alarmed our ancestors. With regard to our present increase of population, the condition of the public revenue would appear to determine the important point, whether that increase has taken place at the top of the body politic or at the bottom? The power of consuming taxed articles will increase with the consumers. Now, who are the consumers? It is surely the extreme of poverty that can debar any portion of the people from using some of the comforts and luxuries of life. And yet it appears that a population of 12 millions, in 1811, paid 66 millions of taxation, whilst 18 millions, in 1839, could only pay 54 millions! It is therefore inferred, from such data, that the increase has been chiefly amongst the poor, otherwise this could not have happened; nay, further, that, as is

the poverty of living, so is the tendency to multiply.

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But the historical investigations of Mr Doubleday, in reference to his theory, are by no means restricted to our own country, and its somewhat minute phenomena of men and means. He shows us the tide of hostile invasion rolling on for ages against imperial Rome Cimbri, Teutones, and Ambrores: Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, Huns, and more polished nations, Persians, Ottomans, Moors, and Sawave after wave, obeying that singular and secret impulse which drove them on in one deviating course, tending generally from north-east to south-west, and protracted for centuries-from the first rush of the Gauls upon the infant Republic to the last sack of Constantinople by Mahomet II.—until, by the continuity of their action, spreading over so many centuries, the empire of the Cæsars was humbled in the dust. This indescribable and determined love of movement, in a certain direction, pervading countless hordes, incapable as it is of being imputed to ambition or caprice, and resembling nothing but the singular propensity of the animal called the " Lemming," is regarded by Mr Doubleday as a movement of " population." The cause for it, he says, is probably to be sought and found in the state and condition of the races inhabiting those vast and over-populated regions known in modern times, as China, Ava, Cochin China, Chinese Tartary, Hindostan, Delhi, and the countries west of the Indus, including Affghanistan, Cabul, Lahore, and the Punjaub, until we come to the frontiers of Persia, and the hilly countries lying towards the Caspian and the Euxine. the growth and extension of the enormous population, comprehended within these limits, and making up a multitude of beings hardly to be conceived, we see a continuous cause, Mr Doubleday tell us, of the gradual and progressive migration of all the more scattered tribes, which they must have gradually displaced.

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In the internal aspect also of the