nor by even one-half of the episcopal bench:-a society which "cannot be called a Church Society," and which yet has eight prelates at its head!

But we may pass on to higher authorities than these. The Society for Propagating the Gospel-were these "Church principles" of Dr. Hook's known or regarded in its formation?

Not in the least? In the year 1701 the Sovereign issues his charter, constituting eleven only of the prelates of the Church, together with a number of laymen whose names are given, a Society for the purposes therein described. By this charter, under which the society still exists and acts, the members are enjoined to meet on a certain day in every year, then to elect a president. Not the least obligation is imposed, of electing an Archbishop or Bishop, or any other clerical person. A layman is as eligible for the office as the Primate himself. Lord Melbourne or Lord Ellenborough or Sir John Hobhouse might be made President this very next year. That the choice generally falls on the Archbishop of Canterbury is a circumstance arising out of the mere will of the individual members for the time being, and not at all from any law or original proviso of the society's constitution. The prelates of the Church are admitted by election, not assigned a place at the head of the institution as matter of right. The Collection of Papers, printed by the society in 1706, states that since the formation of the society the following Bishops had been elected members :-Durham, Winchester, Llandaff, Exeter, Sarum, Lichfield, Norwich, Peterborough, Bristol, Lincoln, and Oxford. At least four, then, and probably a larger number, of the prelates of the Church, were not even members of the society, and the like deficiency existed for many years after. This society, therefore, utterly fails to answer Dr. Hook's requirements. It was not placed "under the superintendence of the Archbishops and all the Bishops of both provinces of the Church of England;" nor did it place the diocesans in their right position," inasmuch as it left them to be admitted or rejected, by the votes of a mixed body of clergy and laity.

And precisely the same censure might be passed on the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. This society was, perhaps, more irregular than any other known institution of a similar class, in its original formation. We have seen that it arose from a meeting of certain laymen, who assembled for the purpose of praying, singing psalms, and exhorting each other. We may add, that in this society, as in the last-named, a Bishop was only admitted on the formal proposition of two members, and by the ordeal of the ballot. And, what is still worse, up to 1813, at least, and proba

bly still later, it was not even needful to be a member of the Church of England, to become one of this society! In its papers published in that year, the form of declaration to be made by the persons proposing a new member, only alleged him to be "wellaffected to the Church of England," a description which would have admitted Matthew Henry, Doddridge, and half the Wesleyans of the present day!

But we cannot agree thus to condemn all that the Church has been doing, from 1701 downwards, merely to enable a few heated controversialists of the present day to excommunicate the Church Missionary and Church Pastoral Aid Societies. Dr. Hook's canons are inadmissible. We must cease from judging and anathematizing one another, and fall back upon the apostolic rule :-" One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike: Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." Neither Dr. Hook, nor any other Presbyter of our Church, has any authority to impose laws upon our consciences, which he cannot shew to us, clearly written down, either in Scripture or in the standards of our Church. The latter, as Dr. Hook by his omission of all reference to them confesses, are silent upon the present subject. The former, from which, indeed, Dr. Hook professes to educe his "principles," will no more support his conclusions, than they would support Popery itself. "A man that is an HERETIC, after the first and second admonition, reject." This injunction, addressed by St. Paul to a Bishop, is seriously referred to, by Dr. Hook, to prove that we, who are not Bishops, ought to reject" from our religious societies the aid of those who are not heretics; who hold the same creeds with ourselves; and who are, as Mr. Gladstone confesses, scarcely to be called schismatics. With all our respect for the Vicar of Leeds, we must place this arbitrary citing of Scripture among those "wrestings," and "private interpretations," against which we are cautioned. Some better reasoning, some clearer command from God's word, must be advanced, before we can give up that "liberty" which the great Apostle so repeatedly enjoins us to retain.

* Gladstone's "Church Principles," p. 422.

THE PRINCIPLES OF POPULATION, and their Connection with Human Happiness. By ARCHIBALD ALISON, F.R.S.E., Advocate, Sheriff of Lanarkshire, &c. Two vols. 8vo. Edinburgh: Blackwood.

1840.

THIS is a very good book, with a most mistaken and misleading title. Never, in fact, was there a more complete misnomer. We have a collection of Essays, many of them quite masterly both in style and reasoning, on a variety of subjects. Here is one on the Corn Laws; one on Poor Laws; one on Church Establishments. On these, and on several other subjects, the Author is nervous, clear, and entirely satisfactory. The subject on which he throws least light is that of POPULATION!

His book is an unanswerable proof of the inapplicability of the Horatian rule to all cases. Had the book been published when it was written (1828) it would not only have been a valuable contribution to the philanthropic literature of the day, but would have taken far higher rank for originality and truth than can now be assigned to it. Little as it does to settle the then obscure subject of "the Principles of Population," it would still, at the above date, have been among the most respectable attempts extant, even in that line. Had it then appeared, it might have claimed at least a share in the destruction of the atrocious system of Malthus.* But its Author fell into the error of imagining that the world would stand still while his "nine years" term was being fulfilled; and his book now comes before the public under the vast disadvantage, so far as its professed object is concerned, of having been far more than anticipated by the profound and conclusive treatise of Mr. Sadler.

We regret that Mr. Alison did not, in this view, give his collection a more appropriate name, and one which might not so directly invite a comparison with Mr. Sadler's work. Under the more accurate designation of "Essays on the State and Prospects of Society," or of some title similarly general, the book could not have failed to command attention-to command it in a degree much beyond that which is likely to be excited by so repulsive, and at the same time so incorrect a description as is given by the present title-page. Considering its real value, and the important

Atrocious, and nothing less than atrocious, we must ever maintain that system to be, which maintains, that "a youth of eighteen would be as completely justified in indulging the sexual passion with every object capable of exciting it, as in following indiscriminately every impulse of his benevolence."

discussions on many topics which it contains, we much regret this

error.

We would not, however, be supposed to assert, that Mr. Alison has produced nothing of value on that topic which stands in front of, and gives its name to, his work. He had attentively studied, and carefully considered, Mr. Malthus's system, and had worked out for himself a very sufficient refutation. Had he published these volumes, as he ought to have done, in 1828, he might have reasonably claimed some share in the extirpation of that mischief which in 1828 was so rife, but in 1840 had become utterly extinctthe current belief in Malthusianism. He now can only aim his arrows at a fallen foe. Mr. Malthus's tomes have been already consigned to the stalls and the trunk-makers; and we read Mr. Alison's strictures more for the sake of their own ingenuity, than as being any longer required for the destruction of that most pernicious heresy. Yet there are in his pages some facts of so striking a character as to deserve the widest possible circulation. One or two such we will now give.

The fundamental error upon which Mr. Malthus raised his system was a groundless hypothesis-that the natural growth of population led to a doubling of numbers every twenty or twentyfive years, while a similar doubling of food was impossible. From this parent fiction he deduced the appalling consequences, that a scarcity of food was inevitable,-was near at hand: and that the chief object with legislators and philanthropists ought to be, to check human increase as far as possible, so as to stave off, as long as we might, that fearful juncture which seemed to be inevitable; when human beings, for lack of other food, would be reduced to feed upon each other!

This monstrous nightmare arose, like all similar fancies of the modern school of political economy, out of a wilful, a purposed ignorance and negligence of plain and obvious facts. Mr. Alison acts like a man of common sense; and beginning, most rationally, with his own country, in a very few moments lays Mr. Malthus's whole system in ten thousand fragments, destroyed so utterly as to leave not the slightest hope of its reconstruction. Never was plain fact and unanswerable reasoning more triumphant over vague and shadowy speculation than in the following passage:

"If, in order to test the comparative powers of population and production, it is allowable to put the physically possible, but highly improbable, and morally impossible event of an old state like the British empire doubling in numbers every five-and-twenty years, it is of course necessary to suppose on the other side the equally physically possible, but morally improbable, event of the whole resources of the country being applied during the same period to the production of subsistence. Now, if that were done, there cannot be

the shadow of a doubt, that the island could, in the space of five or ten years, be made to maintain double its present number of inhabitants. It is stated by Mr. Cowling, whose accuracy on this subject is well known, and his statement is adopted by the learned and able Mr. Porter, that there are in England and Wales 27,700,000 cultivated acres: in Ireland 12,125,000; and in Scotland about 5,265,000: in all, 45,090,000: and of these, he calculates that there are at present in cultivation by the spade and the plough 19,237,000 acres, and 27,000,000 in pasturage. That is just about two acres to every human being in the United Kingdom; the number of inhabitants in Great Britain and Ireland, in 1827, being about 23,000,000, and the same proportion probably obtains at the present time, when their numbers are nearly 30,000,000. Now a full supply of subsistence for every living person in wheat is a quarter a year; so that at this rate there is only one quarter raised over the whole empire for every two acres of arable and meadow land. But an acre of arable land yields, on an average of all England, two quarters and five bushels, or somewhat more than two quarters and a half; so that every two acres is capable, at the present average, of maintaining five human beings, or five times the present inhabitants of the empire. Can there be the smallest doubt that in a few years this quarter per half acre might be turned into two quarters per acre, less than the existing average of England? Nay, is there not ground to believe that, by greater exertion, every acre might be made to produce three quarters, still less than the average of many of its counties? The first of these changes would at once yield food for four times, the last for six times the present inhabitants of the British isles, independent altogether of the waste lands, &c., of which Mr. Cowling states there are 6,000,000 acres capable of being turned into arable and pasture lands, at present wholly uncultivated, which, at the same rate, would maintain nearly 20,000,000 more. So that, if these data are correct, it will follow that about 120,000,000 of human beings in the first view, and 180,000,000 in the second, supposing our present population to be in round numbers 30,000,000, might be maintained with ease and comfort from the territory of the United Kingdom alone; and supposing them all to be maintained on wheaten bread drawn from the arable, and butcher-meat raised on the pasture, lands, without any intermixture of potatoes or inferior food, which is greatly more productive.

"This alternative result, immense and incredible as it may appear, would only be at the rate of two or three persons to every acre of arable and meadow land in the kingdom-a proportion which is by no means impossible, if it be considered that three-fifths of the land brought into cultivation in Great Britain and Ireland, or 27,000,000 of acres, are in meadow and pasture: that one acre in wheat is perfectly capable of producing, on an average, two quarters, that is of maintaining two human beings; and that in potatoes, according to the best authorities, it will feed three times as many.

"But it is superfluous to go into these details on speculative points never likely to be realized in practice. Suffice it to say, therefore, that, on the most moderate calculation, Great Britain and Ireland are capable of maintaining, in ease and affluence, 120,000,000 of inhabitants. This proceeds on the supposition, that the whole mountain and waste land is deducted as altogether unprofitable, and that the remaining arable land is divided into three parts, of which two-thirds are entirely set aside for luxuries and conveniences, and that the remaining third alone is devoted to the staple food of man, partly in wheat and partly in potatoes."—(vol. i. pp. 48-51.)

But Mr. Alison does not rest contented with a single instance; he presents the same argument again and again; and each time, as the ponderous roller passes over the fallen fragments of Malthusianism, smaller and smaller wax the particles, till at last the wind