and the closes of Glasgow. In the old town of Limerick families of eight or nine persons inhabit single rooms not more than four yards square, into which the rain pours through the roof, and the wind rushes through the broken windows.* One sixth of the population are thus lodged. In Cork, says Mr. Thackeray, after 'mentioning the loneliness of the "respectable" portion of the city, "there are quarters swarming with life, but of such a frightful kind as no pen need care to describe; alleys where the odours and rags and darkness are so hideous, that one runs frightened away from them. In some of them, they say, not the policeman, only the priest, can penetrate."† As, however, the defective house accommodation of the lower classes does not always proceed altogether from their poverty, it is unnecessary to dilate upon the subject at present, further than to mention a remarkable fact, ascertained at the last census, viz. that above a million of families, not much less than five-sixths of the whole nation, are living either in mud huts or in single rooms of larger houses. Independently of this, sufficient specimens of other kinds of misery have been given to serve as illustrations of the extent to which over-population has proceeded in Ireland. Appendix C. to Third Report of Irish Poor Inquiry Commission, part i. p. 87. † Irish Sketch Book, vol. i. p. 136. Report of Irish Census Commissioners, p. 16. Part of the evidence from which the preceding particulars have been taken was collected in the year 1835, when there was no legal provision for the Irish poor. Since then a poor law has been applied to Ireland; the whole country has been divided into Unions, and 112 workhouses have been built, into which 71,217 paupers were admitted in the course of the year 1844. It is not probable, however, that these measures can have sensibly diminished the immense mass of destitution existing beyond the walls of the workhouses: indeed, we have the positive testimony of recent tourists that they have not done so*, and at any rate they cannot have diminished the over-population which that misery indicated, for the necessity of relieving destitution by charity is as unequivocal a sign of over-population as destitution itself. The inference drawn from the evidence in question is therefore as applicable to the present as to any former period.† In 1842, Mr. Thackeray, passing through the county of Cork, found many of the potato gardens half dug up in the first week of August, nearly three months before the potato is ripe or at full growth, and while winter was still three months away.-Irish Sketch Book, vol. i. p. 175. † In explanation of the absence of quotations from the evidence collected by the Irish Land Commissioners of 1844, it may be proper to mention, that this chapter was written some months before that evidence was published. It would certainly have been desirable to appeal to the latest authorities on Irish wretchedness; but the omission to do so is of the less consequence, as the description given by the Commissioners of 1835, which has been chiefly followed in the text, is amply corroborated by all their successors. I 114 CHAPTER IV. CAUSES OF OVER-POPULATION IN GENERAL. Decrease in the Demand for Labour. - Excessive Augmentation of the Numbers of a Community. Propensity of Mankind to multiply too rapidly. Motives for restraining this Propensity. - Influence of such Motives upon People in easy Circumstances. Their utter Inefficacy among the very poor. Tendency of Misery to promote Population. Illustrations of the Theory proposed.—Structure of Society among pastoral Nations. -- Gradual Conversion of the Poor of such Communities into agricultural Serfs. Physical well-being of Serfs. Transformation of them into free Peasant Proprietors. Prosperity of the Peasantry of Germany. - Esthonia. . Holland. - Belgium. Sketch of the Progress of Society in the Netherlands. State of the Norwegian and Swiss Peasantry.-Causes and Antiquity of their Prosperity. Explanation of the Pauperism existing in Continental Towns. Past and present Condition of the People in Poland and France. Wretchedness of the labouring Class in Southern Italy. - Happiness of the Peasantry in Tuscany and Lombardy. -- --- A PERMANENT deficiency of employment for the labouring class, which has been shown to be the state of things indicated by the term Over-population, does not always proceed from an increase in the number of labourers, but may also originate in a diminished demand for labour. If an important part of the business carried on in any country be abandoned, or contracted within narrower limits, or removed to a foreign soil, or even to a new situation within the same territory, or if machinery be largely substituted for human labour, a number of persons may be thrown out of work who may possibly never again be able to obtain adequate occupation. Such a country will have become overpeopled in consequence merely of the diminution of employment. The population which formerly was not too large to maintain itself in comfort will have become excessive, although it may not have increased in the smallest degree. Some few places in Great Britain have been rendered too populous in this manner, the manufactures formerly carried on in them having been removed to a distance, or old industrial processes having been superseded by improved methods. Although, however, this has been the case in some few instances, it has by no means been so generally throughout the country, in which, when we consider the vast extension of agriculture, as well as of manufactures, of late years, we cannot doubt, that in spite of the adoption of machinery in almost every branch of industry, there must be a greater aggregate demand for human labour at this than at any previous period. As therefore the total amount of employment has increased, its deficiency could not have been constantly becoming more manifest, unless the number of work-people had increased still more than the quantity of work, so that in order to account for the over-population of this island, it will be principally necessary to dis cover the causes of the excessive increase of the people. If in the wantonness of disputation the most obvious truths were not sometimes stoutly contested, it would be superfluous to demonstrate that mankind, like all other animals, have both the power of increasing beyond the means of comfortable subsistence, and also a strong propensity to exercise that power. If the means of subsistence could be supplied in unlimited abundance, and provided no cause of extraordinary mortality were in operation, a community could evidently double itself in a short period, (repeated experience has shown that twenty-five years at most would suffice for the purpose,) and unless the people were deaf to the dictates of nature, it is certain that their numbers would be doubled accordingly. They would also continue to all eternity to be doubled at intervals of the same length, if the means of subsistence continued to increase in the same proportion population, in short, would go on for ever increasing by geometrical progression if sufficient means of subsistence were procurable. But the means of subsistence are far from unlimited. Those of the whole human race cannot at most exceed what the whole earth is capable of yielding, and those of every community are in like manner bounded by the limits of the territory which it inhabits, or with which it has intercourse. In reality, they are much more closely contracted, for, owing to the unequal division of land, to vicious legislation, want of agricultural skill, and other |