Mr Wallace - Error of supposing that the difficulty arising from
population is at a great distance - Mr Condorcet's sketch of the
progress of the human mind - Period when the oscillation,
mentioned by Mr Condorcet, ought to be applied to the human race.
To a person who draws the preceding obvious inferences, from a
view of the past and present state of mankind, it cannot but be a
matter of astonishment that all the writers on the perfectibility
of man and of society who have noticed the argument of an
overcharged population, treat it always very slightly and
invariably represent the difficulties arising from it as at a
great and almost immeasurable distance. Even Mr Wallace, who
thought the argument itself of so much weight as to destroy his
whole system of equality, did not seem to be aware that any
difficulty would occur from this cause till the whole earth had
been cultivated like a garden and was incapable of any further
increase of produce. Were this really the case, and were a
beautiful system of equality in other respects practicable, I
cannot think that our ardour in the pursuit of such a scheme
ought to be damped by the contemplation of so remote a
difficulty. An event at such a distance might fairly be left to
providence, but the truth is that if the view of the argument
given in this Essay be just the difficulty, so far from being
remote, would be imminent and immediate. At every period during
the progress of cultivation, from the present moment to the time
when the whole earth was become like a garden, the distress for
want of food would be constantly pressing on all mankind, if they
were equal. Though the produce of the earth might be increasing
every year, population would be increasing much faster, and the
redundancy must necessarily be repressed by the periodical or
constant action of misery or vice.
Mr Condorcet's Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des Progres
de l'Esprit Humain, was written, it is said, under the pressure
of that cruel proscription which terminated in his death. If he
had no hopes of its being seen during his life and of its
interesting France in his favour, it is a singular instance of
the attachment of a man to principles, which every day's
experience was so fatally for himself contradicting. To see the
human mind in one of the most enlightened nations of the world,
and after a lapse of some thousand years, debased by such a
fermentation of disgusting passions, of fear, cruelty, malice,
revenge, ambition, madness, and folly as would have disgraced the
most savage nation in the most barbarous age must have been such
a tremendous shock to his ideas of the necessary and inevitable
progress of the human mind that nothing but the firmest
conviction of the truth of his principles, in spite of all
appearances, could have withstood.
This posthumous publication is only a sketch of a much larger
work, which he proposed should be executed. It necessarily,
therefore, wants that detail and application which can alone
prove the truth of any theory. A few observations will be
sufficient to shew how completely the theory is contradicted when
it is applied to the real, and not to an imaginary, state of
things.
In the last division of the work, which treats of the future
progress of man towards perfection, he says, that comparing, in
the different civilized nations of Europe, the actual population
with the extent of territory, and observing their cultivation,
their industry, their divisions of labour, and their means of
subsistence, we shall see that it would be impossible to preserve
the same means of subsistence, and, consequently, the same
population, without a number of individuals who have no other
means of supplying their wants than their industry. Having
allowed the necessity of such a class of men, and adverting
afterwards to the precarious revenue of those families that would
depend so entirely on the life and health of their chief, he
says, very justly: 'There exists then, a necessary cause of
inequality, of dependence, and even of misery, which menaces,
without ceasing, the most numerous and active class of our
societies.' (To save time and long quotations, I shall here give
the substance of some of Mr Condorcet's sentiments, and hope I
shall not misrepresent them. But I refer the reader to the work
itself, which will amuse, if it does not convince him.) The
difficulty is just and well stated, and I am afraid that the mode
by which he proposes it should be removed will be found
inefficacious. By the application of calculations to the
probabilities of life and the interest of money, he proposes that
a fund should be established which should assure to the old an
assistance, produced, in part, by their own former savings, and,
in part, by the savings of individuals who in making the same
sacrifice die before they reap the benefit of it. The same, or a
similar fund, should give assistance to women and children who
lose their husbands, or fathers, and afford a capital to those
who were of an age to found a new family, sufficient for the
proper development of their industry. These establishments, he
observes, might be made in the name and under the protection of
the society. Going still further, he says that, by the just
application of calculations, means might be found of more
completely preserving a state of equality, by preventing credit
from being the exclusive privilege of great fortunes, and yet
giving it a basis equally solid, and by rendering the progress of
industry, and the activity of commerce, less dependent on great
capitalists.
Such establishments and calculations may appear very
promising upon paper, but when applied to real life they will be
found to be absolutely nugatory. Mr Condorcet allows that a class
of people which maintains itself entirely by industry is
necessary to every state. Why does he allow this? No other reason
can well be assigned than that he conceives that the labour
necessary to procure subsistence for an extended population will
not be performed without the goad of necessity. If by
establishments of this kind of spur to industry be removed, if
the idle and the negligent are placed upon the same footing with
regard to their credit, and the future support of their wives and
families, as the active and industrious, can we expect to see men
exert that animated activity in bettering their condition which
now forms the master spring of public prosperity? If an
inquisition were to be established to examine the claims of each
individual and to determine whether he had or had not exerted
himself to the utmost, and to grant or refuse assistance
accordingly, this would be little else than a repetition upon a
larger scale of the English poor laws and would be completely
destructive of the true principles of liberty and equality.
But independent of this great objection to these
establishments, and supposing for a moment that they would give
no check to productive industry, by far the greatest difficulty
remains yet behind.
Were every man sure of a comfortable provision for his
family, almost every man would have one, and were the rising
generation free from the 'killing frost' of misery, population
must rapidly increase. Of this Mr Condorcet seems to be fully
aware himself, and after having described further improvements,
he says:
But in this process of industry and happiness, each generation
will be called to more extended enjoyments, and in consequence,
by the physical constitution of the human frame, to an increase
in the number of individuals. Must not there arrive a period
then, when these laws, equally necessary, shall counteract each
other? When the increase of the number of men surpassing their
means of subsistence, the necessary result must be either a
continual diminution of happiness and population, a movement
truly retrograde, or, at least, a kind of oscillation between
good and evil? In societies arrived at this term, will not this
oscillation be a constantly subsisting cause of periodical
misery? Will it not mark the limit when all further amelioration
will become impossible, and point out that term to the
perfectibility of the human race which it may reach in the course
of ages, but can never pass?
He then adds,
There is no person who does not see how very distant such a
period is from us, but shall we ever arrive at it? It is equally
impossible to pronounce for or against the future realization of
an event which cannot take place but at an era when the human
race will have attained improvements, of which we can at present
scarcely form a conception.
Mr Condorcet's picture of what may be expected to happen when
the number of men shall surpass the means of their subsistence is
justly drawn. The oscillation which he describes will certainly
take place and will without doubt be a constantly subsisting
cause of periodical misery. The only point in which I differ from
Mr Condorcet with regard to this picture is the period when it
may be applied to the human race. Mr Condorcet thinks that it
cannot possibly be applicable but at an era extremely distant. If
the proportion between the natural increase of population and
food which I have given be in any degree near the truth, it will
appear, on the contrary, that the period when the number of men
surpass their means of subsistence has long since arrived, and
that this necessity oscillation, this constantly subsisting cause
of periodical misery, has existed ever since we have had any
histories of mankind, does exist at present, and will for ever
continue to exist, unless some decided change take place in the
physical constitution of our nature.
Mr Condorcet, however, goes on to say that should the period,
which he conceives to be so distant, ever arrive, the human race,
and the advocates for the perfectibility of man, need not be
alarmed at it. He then proceeds to remove the difficulty in a
manner which I profess not to understand. Having observed, that
the ridiculous prejudices of superstition would by that time have
ceased to throw over morals a corrupt and degrading austerity, he
alludes, either to a promiscuous concubinage, which would prevent
breeding, or to something else as unnatural. To remove the
difficulty in this way will, surely, in the opinion of most men,
be to destroy that virtue and purity of manners, which the
advocates of equality, and of the perfectibility of man, profess
to be the end and object of their views.