CHAPTER VI.
POPULATION.
In the last generation a wonderful sensation was produced by the propagation of the great Malthusian discovery—the irresistible, indisputable, inexorable truth—that the productive powers of the soil were less and less able to compete with the consuming demands of the human race; that while population was increasing with the rapidity of a swift geometrical progression, the means of providing food lagged with the feebleness of a slow arithmetical advance more and more behind; that the seats at nature’s table—rich and abundant though it was—were being abundantly filled, and that there was no room for superfluous and uninvited guests; in a word, to use the adopted formula, that population was pressing more and more upon subsistence, and that the results must be increasing want, augmenting misery, and a train of calamities boundless as the catalogue of the infinite forms of mortal wretchedness.
How often, when threading through the thousand islands of the Philippine Archipelago, did the shadow of Malthus and the visions of his philosophy present themselves to my thoughts. Of those unnumbered, sea-surrounded regions, how many there are that have never been trodden by European foot, how few that have been thoroughly explored, and fewer still that are now inhabited by any civilized or foreign race! And yet they are covered with beautiful and spontaneous vegetable riches above, and bear countless treasures of mineral wealth below; their powers of production are boundless; they have the varieties of climate which mountains, valleys and plains afford—rains to water—suns to ripen—rivers to conduct—harbours for shipment—every recommendation to attract adventure and to reward industry; a population of only five or six millions, when ten times that number might be supplied to satiety, and enabled to provide for millions upon millions more out of the superfluities of their means.
To what a narrow field of observation must the mind have been confined that felt alarm at a discovery, in itself of so little importance, when brought into the vast sphere of the world’s geography! Though the human race has been increasing at a rapid and almost immeasurable rate, it will be probably found that famines, and plagues, and wars, and those calamitous visitations which were deemed the redressers of the balance—the restorers of the due proportions between man’s wants and man’s supplies—were far more disastrous in ancient than in modern times, if the smaller number of then existing human beings be taken into consideration.
The nobler and higher axiom is that “progress” is the law of Providence, which never fails, while the race of man proceeds in ever-augmenting numbers, to provide ample means for their maintenance and happiness. Neither land nor sea is exhausted nor in process of exhaustion. What myriads of acres, whether in cold, temperate, or tropical climes, remain to be appropriated! what still greater amount to be improved by cultivation! And while in the more densely peopled parts of the world outlets may be required for those who are ill at ease and born to no inheritance but labour, how wonderfully are locomotive facilities increased, so that the embarrassment to ambulatory man is less to discover a fit place for his domicile, than to select one amid the many which offer themselves to his choice! If the poverty-struck Irish could emigrate in such multitudes to American or Australian regions, far greater are the facilities possessed by those better conditioned labouring masses of Europe who are still heavily pressed by the competition of neighbours more fortunate than themselves.
It is a matter of surprise that the Spanish colonies should not have attracted a greater number of Spaniards to settle in them; but the national spirit of the Iberian peninsula has ceased to be ambulatory or adventurous. Spain itself is thinly peopled, and offers great resources to its satisfied peasantry. “God,” they say, “has given everything to Spain which He had to give. Our land is an Eden—why should we desert it?” Yet Spain, backward, inert and unenergetic, as she has proved herself to be in the rivalry of active nations, has taken her part in the proud history of human advancement. The more enterprising invaders of Gothic or Anglo-Saxon blood have frequently extirpated the indigenous races of the remote countries in which they have settled. One wave of emigration has followed another; commerce and cultivation have created a demand for, and provided a supply of, the intrusive visitors. But Spain has never furnished such numbers as to dislodge the aboriginal tribes. Her colonists have been always accompanied by large bodies of ecclesiastics, bent upon bringing “the heathen” into the Christian fold. These missionaries have no doubt often stood between the cupidity of the conqueror and the weakness of the conquered. They have preserved, by protecting the Indian clans, and it may be doubted whether ultimately the permanent interests of man will not have been served by influences, whose beneficial consequences may remain when the most prominent evils connected with those influences may be greatly modified or wholly pass away.
My observations and my reflections, then, lead to this conclusion—that, whatever exceptional cases there may be, the great tide of advancement rolls forward in ever-growing strength;—that the course of the Divine government is
From seeming evil still educing good,
And BETTER thence again, and BETTER still,
In infinite progression;—