Upon the whole, it is better that one’s confessor should be a little poorer, as well as a little more plausible in speech, than one’s self: he ought to be a man to whom meat and drink are things of some account—a broken-down Scotch licentiate—an author who has published respectable books which have never sold; in short, some idle, poor, servile individual, to whom it is of the last importance to get a good grazing ground in the back premises of a substantial trader, upon whom he may revenge that partiality of fortune, which decrees all the real comforts of life to the mercantile and common-place, while the real “clever fellows” starve.
But, after all, it must be allowed that there is a great deal of confessorship in the world, independent of a regard to cake and pudding. It is in many cases simply a fascination exerted over one mind by another; in others, the result of that very common failing, the want of confidence in one’s own resources. Young men—by which, I mean men in the mason-lodge time of life, say between twenty and five-and-twenty—are most apt to indulge in confession. They think friends all in all, and for friends would give up every thing. All business and duty is to them an episode, only consented to because it is unavoidable; while the enjoyment of the countenance of their friends seems the main and true concern of life. Then are the joys of confession truly relished. Then does the vampire confessor suck deepest into the vitals of his devotee. Happy delusion—sweet morning dream—alas! too certain to awake to the conviction that it is “but a dream!”
A CHAPTER OF POLITICAL ECONOMY,
WRITTEN FOR THE BRITISH PEASANTRY.
The monstrous absurdity, that there is a principle in the economy of nature by which population increases beyond the means of support, has been stated by men eminent in various departments of political economy, and countenanced by individuals in whom the soundest reasoning and farsightedness might have been expected. There is not a principle in nature having a tendency to increase population beyond the means of subsistence, or to overpeople the world. To suppose that there is, is to impugn the magnificent designs of the Creator, and to call in question his vigilant and ever-sustaining providence. When the globe which we inhabit, and all that it sustains in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, was called into existence, and sent forth fresh from the hands of its Divine Constructor, certain fixed principles were ordained and put into unintermitting action, by which all were to be sustained, and prevented alike from coming to a stand, or into collision. These principles involved the production and reproduction of food for man and beast through an incalculable series of ages; and this process of production was left to be excited or retarded in a great measure by man, for whose convenience all subordinate parts were organised, and by whose thinking faculties the increase or decrease of food was apparently to be proportioned. In a word, it was left to our free-will whether to cultivate the soil, or leave it in its rude and unproductive condition.
It has happened in the course of some five or six thousand years after the creation of the world, that a small island, lying in the seas which border on the northern part of Europe—a spot of earth so comparatively small that it may be traversed from one end to the other in the space of little more than a week—has, by the artificial state of its society, and a concourse of injudicious regulations, increased in its population to about seventeen millions of inhabitants; and because, as must necessarily be the case from the influence of these regulations, a number of the people are in impoverished circumstances, and are not so well fed as their neighbours, it has, forsooth, pleased a few men in this large mass of humanity to impeach the God of the universe, and to tell us that He creates millions of thinking beings only to put them to death by starvation.
To show the utter fallacy of this detestable theory, I need only bring under your notice two simple facts, in which all such vicious and shallow-minded reasoning finds an insurmountable obstacle to its establishment. It is a great, a comforting, and an undeniable fact, that there are immense tracts of land, islands, and even continents, which till this hour are lying in nearly their primeval state, with the soil untouched since the beginning of the world. So boundless are these almost uninhabited territories, so capable are they of sustaining human life, that, if the proper means were used, they would yield food, clothing, and a place of residence to more people than all that the ancient settlements of the human race at present contain. They could hold all the existing population of the earth, and not be filled. Canada itself could receive and maintain the whole of the population of Europe; and the seventeen millions of human beings belonging to the little island which has raised such alarm, might be transported to the banks of one of the mighty rivers in the United States, and it would hardly be known that they had taken up their residence in the country. “Send us over your whole population (says an American writer); we have plenty of room for you all, and a hundred millions more.” But such a gratifying fact as this gives but a faint idea of the vastness, the capabilities of the world beyond the waters of the Atlantic. In one of the numbers of the Journal, I presented the account given by the ingenious naturalist Audubon, of the wild pigeons of America. Have my readers any recollection of the extraordinary number of these animals, and the calculation made regarding the quantity of their daily food? Let me here repeat and extend the calculation. The number of pigeons seen on the wing by Audubon, as computed by allowing two pigeons to the square yard, was one billion, one hundred and fifteen millions, one hundred and thirty-six thousand, and “as every pigeon (says he) daily consumes fully half a pint of food, the quantity necessary for supplying this vast multitude must be eight millions seven hundred and twelve thousand bushels per day.” The species of food used is the produce of the trees. We thus find, that by a moderate calculation a single flock of pigeons in the back woods of America consumes in one day as great an amount of food, whether by weight or measure, as would support the whole seventeen millions of people in Great Britain for at least a week. The mind is lost in wonder in contemplation of so magnificent a fact. The faculty of thought is bewildered in pondering on so striking an instance of the astonishing bounty of the great Author of Nature in providing for the wants of his creatures. Where, where, may we then ask, have the predicters of famine been examining the sources of food for man? On what have their eyes and their thoughts been fixed, that they have passed over this prospect of inexhaustible plenty? It would seem that they have never looked beyond the confines of that little spot of land in the ocean, which I have alluded to, and whose superabundant thousands require only to be transferred to that division on the earth’s surface holding out food, raiment, and residence for their gratuitous acceptance, in order that society may right itself.
The above is the first fact I have to offer in the elucidation of this important question; and I maintain, in direct opposition to those who have taken a contrary view of the subject—among whom I am sorry to include persons otherwise distinguished for the clearness and comprehensiveness of their views of the social compact—that until the whole earth has been peopled, and until it can hold no more, it cannot rationally be said that the means of subsistence are inadequate for the wants of the population. These means are no more inadequate than that the produce of a kitchen-garden is insufficient to support the family to which it belongs; and if this family be prevented from seeking its subsistence beyond its garden walls, and so be half starved, their miserable case is exactly parallel with that of this over-populated island. Remove, I would say, all restrictions of a certain description; do not unnaturally foster population either in a particular part of the country, or at a particular time; LET MANKIND ALONE: and, in the same manner that fluids find their level, so will the redundant population of Great Britain and Ireland be profitably dispersed over territories hitherto untrodden by the footsteps of civilised men.
My second fact is more hypothetical, but not less obvious to our understanding. It is an old proverbial expression, that “necessity is the mother of invention.” Now, in this sentiment we discover one of the wisest provisions of Providence. It is only by necessity that mankind, in a savage state, are compelled to hunt, or otherwise toil, for their subsistence. The same feeling predominates through all the ramifications of civilised society. In proportion as the necessities of men spur them on to seek out new means of subsistence, so do these new means of subsistence open upon their view. If we cast a retrospective glance upon those steps which society has traced from its infancy to manhood—from a state of barbaric rudeness to a condition of luxury and splendour—we invariably find that all improvements have originated in the wants of the people; and that, in proportion as they increased in number, so did they whet their invention, and contrive additional means of support. It is from this cause that Scotland, for instance, had no greater overplus of food when it had only a million of inhabitants than it has now, when it supports nearly three times the number. Nay, it had much less food in proportion when it had only a million of people; and hence it is proved that mankind, by their inventions and improvements, greatly increase the means of support beyond the point at which they formerly stood. The power of seeking out, or inventing, new means of subsistence, just as the old ones are perceived to be inadequate, has been actively at work since the beginning of time, and will operate for the benefit of our race as long as sun and moon endure. It is in the exercise of this transcendent faculty of the human mind that we see the beneficence of the Creator in providing unseen means of subsistence; and it is in it that we find the cheering hope, that at no period, however distant, even when the whole earth shall have been covered with inhabitants, shall mankind languish for lack of food. As they go on increasing in number, so will they go on perfecting their contrivances; every succeeding generation may labour under some new difficulty, but so will it be endowed with the faculty of releasing itself from it.
THE DRAMA.
Theatricals are said to be losing public favour in almost every place where they are known, and public writers are puzzled to account for it.