Te most difficult questions in political economy are, andonbtedly, those connected with the laws of popnlation—when increase ceases to be a blessing, and what are the best means to prevent excessive multiplication, without affecting either the morality or the comfort of the governed. In fact, by what course of action the nataral checks to over-population may be presented in such a form as to impose the least porsonal restraint on individuals, has been too frequently assumed that increase of population was the of a well-governed State, while its opposite, diminution, as surely pointed out some in the raling pow-ug nations in precisely 8 together, such a law may seem to be satisfactorily proved; but when we extend our researches further, the strange anomaly, thatexcessi increase may be the direct result of ill government, forces itself on our mind:
sufficient to adduce two markable instances of this peculiar effect, taken from the two extremes of the Old World—China and Ireland. By over-population, in both cases, we mean the increase of the numbers of the people beyond the means of snbsistence made uso of by them; because, with respect to the possible means of livelihood, which it is doubtful if any nation ever yet pressed upon them, it is certain that neither in one case or the other has that limit been even ap. proached. Over-population then is to be looked nponasa comparative standard—the hunting grounds of the savage may be too thickly peopled with an average of five inhabitants to the square mile; the same soil may afterwards, with a different civilisation, support in plenty population fifty times greater.
In the two instances adduced then, we mean, by over-population, such an increase of the inhabitants as to reduce the average standing of the individual, and to render a failure of the ordinary means of subsistence fatal to large por-of the population. Such a state been attained in Ireland, in 1847, when disease in one single crop sufficed to produce the death, by actual starvation (to use so questionable a word), of thousands of the population, and to i duce a pestilence futai, directly, to probably many hundreds of thousands, Such a state had been attained in the north of China, previously to the out Lreak of the Taiping rebellion; and such is, at present, the chronic state of large districts in the northern provinces, where, year after yenr, we hear the ne tale of destitution, owing to the failure of crops, consequent on continual dry seasons. The permanent state of disaffection of the masses in Ireland, since 1848, may well be compared with the rebellions which, in China, have been constantxince the reign of Tao Kwang, although, in the central and northern provinces, allayed in their intensity by the exhaustion consequent on the great Taiping movement, which may be said have almost depopulated, either directly by the sword, or ctly by famine and pestilence, at least three of the provinees of the empire 'AS we have said, however, this over population which lias, in both country led to such disastrous results, may be the result of bad government." Population, in fact, muy increase at a still greater actual ratio under certain forms of misgovernment, than under the best and wisest administrati Had Treland, for instance, not bad i industrial striving, the seventeenth century, checked WSs the superior power of England, and had ber inhabitants been free to cultivate what crops they desived, it is unlikely that, in the beginning of 1847, its population should have amounted to eight and a lif millions, Hud free intercommanication been encouraged or permitted in China, there is no reason to believe that the inhabitants would have settled downlike nts, in the more fertile and easily. caltivable districts, till man began at last to press on beast for means of subsist tence. In Ireland, the spirit of improvement was repressed by a jealousy lest progress in the arts should inter ith the manufactures of Great "Gentlemen," said King William ILL, in reply to the addresses of the Parliament of 1698, "I will do all that in me lies to discourage the woollen manufacture in Ireland." The royal word was kept in spirit as well asin letter; every oh-Lenction was thrown in the way of production, not only of woollens but of all other goods; the cultivation of tobacco, for which the soil
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.