Standing by itself, this table, like most of the others, seems to support Mr. Sadler’s theory. But surely London, at the close of the seventeenth century, was far more thickly peopled than the kingdom of England now is. Yet the fecundity in London at the close of the seventeenth century was 4; and the average fecundity of the whole kingdom now is not more, according to Mr. Sadler, than 3.5 Then, again, the large towns in 1700 were far more thickly peopled than Westmorland and the North Riding of Yorkshire now are. Yet the fecundity in those large towns was then 4.5. And Mr. Sadler tells us that it is now only 4.2 in Westmorland and the North Riding.
It is scarcely necessary to say any thing about the censuses of the Netherlands, as Mr. Sadler himself confesses that there is some difficulty in reconciling them with his theory, and helps out his awkward explanation by supposing, quite gratuitously, as it seems to us, that the official documents are inaccurate. The armament which he has drawn from the United States will detain us but for a very short time. He has not told us,—perhaps he had not the means of telling us,—what proportion the number of births in the different parts of that country bears to the number of marriages. He shows that in the thinly-peopled states the number of children bears a greater proportion to the number of grown-up people than in the old states; and this, he conceives, is a sufficient proof that the condensation of the population is unfavourable to fecundity. We deny the inference altogether. Nothing can be more obvious than the explanation of the phenomenon. The back settlements are for the most part peopled by emigration from the old states; and emigrants are almost always breeders. They are almost always vigorous people in the prime of life. Mr. Sadler himself, in another part of his book, in which he tries very unsuccessfully to show that, the rapid multiplication of the people of America is principally owing to emigration from Europe, states this fact in the plainest manner:
“Nothing is more certain, than that emigration is almost universally supplied by ‘single persons in the beginning of mature life;’ nor, secondly, that such persons, as Dr. Franklin long ago asserted, ‘marry and raise families.’
“Nor is this all. It is not more true, that emigrants, generally speaking, consist of individuals in the prime of life’, than that ‘they are the most active and vigorous’ of that age, as Dr. Sey-bert describes them to be. They are, as it respects the principle at issue, a select class, even compared with that of their own age generally considered. Their very object in leaving their native countries is to settle in life, a phrase that needs no explanation; and they do so. No equal number of human beings, therefore, have ever given so large or rapid an increase to a community as ‘settlers’ have invariably done.”
It is perfectly clear that children are more numerous in the back settlements of America than in the maritime states, not because unoccupied land makes people prolific, but because the most prolific people go to the unoccupied laud.
Mr. Sadler having, as he conceives, fully established his theory of population by statistical evidence, proceeds to prove, “that it is in unison, or rather required by the principles of physiology.” The difference between himself and his opponents he states as follows:—
“In pursuing this part of my subject, I must begin by reminding the reader of the difference between those who hold the superfecundity of mankind and myself, in regard to those principles which will form the basis of the present argument. They contend, that production precedes population; I, on the contrary, maintain that population precedes, and is indeed the cause of, production. They teach that man breeds up to the capital, or in proportion to the abundance of the food, he possesses; I assert, that he is comparatively sterile when he is wealthy, and that he breeds in proportion to his poverty; not meaning, however, by that poverty, a state of privation approaching to actual starvation, any more than, I suppose, they would contend, that extreme and culpable excess is the grand patron of population. In a word, they hold that a state of ease and affluence is the great promoter of prolificness: I maintain that a considerable degree of labour, and even privation, is a more efficient cause of an increased degree of human fecundity.”