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Leader (1850-1860), 4th January 1851, Edition Country of 2, Page 14

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      Social Reform. Epi8tolje Obscurorum Viro...

      attained ; and that the idea of postponing the question is ' * not only an error , but the most serious one to be found in the whole field of political economy . " I infer from his context that , if checks were in abeyance , population would double itself in twenty years , and we should incur a practical retribution for slighting Malthus . Now , the whole practical importance of the question turns upon this matter of timej and the question of time involves some ulterior considerations , not included in the

      common view . We might take it for granted that there is such a ratio between the enerease of population and of food , that some day the fatal limit would be attained , and yet the theoretical fact would have no more importance for us than the supposititious meeting of two parallel lines . But the proximity or remoteness of the fatal juncture bears upon the still obscure and almost unexplored question—the nature of the two counteractives .

      " The law of the production of land , " says Mill , " is that , in any given state of agricultural skill and knowledge , by encreasing the labour , the produce is not encreased in an equal-degree- ; -doubling—the _ lab _ _ does not double the produce ; or , to express the same thing in other words , every enerease of produce is obtained by a more than proportional enerease in the application of labour to the land . " He admits , however , that laws , usages , and tenures , are such as to check the flow of capital on the land , although " if capital were forthcoming to execute within the next year , all known and recognized improvements in the land of the United Kingdom which would ' pay' at the existing prices , inferior land would not for a long time" be needed

      for cultivation . Probably the spread of high tillage might be conteracted . He also admits that probably the worst land now in cultivation produces as much as the richest soil yielded to our ancestors : the disuse of fallows virtually added a fourth to the extent of land ; rotation of crops , manures , stock feeding , mechanical inventions , oeconomies of labour , good reads , & c , have done the rest . He admits that farther manufacturing refinements may at once disengage manufacturing labour for better division of employments and reinforcements of agricultural labour ; also that education might enerease the efficiency of labour ; finally , that importations of food and emigration are counteractives of redundant population .

      Now let us enumerate the elements with which we are supplied by Mill towards postponing the practical pressure of the population question . The discontinuance of fallows has virtually added to the extent of the land ; the produce per acre has about doubled , even on the worst soils ; importation of food has added to our stefe , and emigration is an outlet for living surplus : with these auxiliaries we have made a shift thus far , and , upon the whole , ceconomists generally tell us we are better off than we were with a scantier population . As to the future , Mill promises new access of capital to land ,

      on improvement of laws , tenures , and usages ; further improvements , which in a single year would actually have the effect of throwing land out of cultivation , as not needed ; reinforcements of labour , applicable to land ; and encreased efficiency of the labourer . We believe it would be very difficult to calculate the aggregate effect of all these beneficial changes . It is notorious that absurd covenants keep a great deal of land in a state of half cultivation : the abrogation of such covenants , permitting whole cultivation , would virtually double the land under them . It is a . general charge against tenant-farmers that they have not half

      capital enough : admit two capitals where one is , and you have two farms where one is — land doubled . Investigations as to the true ratio of superficial space , depth of culture , quantity of manure , and produce , are wholly in their infancy : thus , while it is impossible even to make a random guess at the total results of the advance in agricultural science , we can , at least , perceive that it must virtually and largely multiply the extent of land . Without going inLo any gigantic operations , emigrant colonization lias had so marked an effect in Home counties that the farmers have conspired to check it , and yet , hitherto , it has been imperfectly used .

      It is to be observed that Mill naturally speaks , throughout , on the presumption that , trade is the onl y medium for obtaining concert of labour in the division of employments ; and it \ a curious to see the length to which that presumption carrieH him , when he can make the remarkable assertion that , " however dear labour may be , when food is wanted , labour will-always be applied to producing it in preference to anything else "—an assertion made jn the teeth of the fuels , that we nee capital idle ,

      land idle , and men idle , while capital is wasted on the endless production of nicknacks , and food is wanted for immense numbers . He appears to me , in common with the ceconomists of our day , to be misled by the fact that certain , employments do not pay in any trading process—that is , do not subserve with immediate profit the process of exchange—which yet would amply pay the community or the actual workers . I will give two instances . It is well known that the formation of roads in many rural districts would be a powerful auxiliary of agriculture , but that

      roads are unmade , or ill made , because there is no sufficient disengageable money-jjrofit for individuals , or because the incidence of the burden is a disputable point . Again , on the moorlands beyond the Union farm near Sheffield , certain persons have been permitted to squat , to build residences , and to cultivate the land for themselves ; as a trading transaction it would not " pay" them to rent the land , neither would it pay the owner to reclaim the land : but while these persons obtain a subsistence out of it they are withdrawn from the surplus popina ^ oirrwithdrawi ^ r ^ ra 4 > einga _ charge

      on their quota of the land under ordinary trading culture ; withdrawn from any of those waste occupations that delude so many of our townspeople with the mockery of employment . If , besides other improvements that we have indicated , there were to be a real advance towards extending the principle of concert in division of employments , beyond the very imperfect concert , or rather disconcert of competitive trade , we may be sure that the pressure of the population question has no practical bearing upon our day . When oeconomists attached to old ideas speak of it , you can always convert their proposition into a more practical and matter-of-fact statement : when they speak of

      surplus labour they mean labour exiled from landland which is as if it were in chancery , under absurd tenures , or half occupancy ; they mean , labour misdirected by " the ^ higgling of the market , " to making Paisley shawls when no Paisley shawls are wanted , while it might be tilling the idle land , making roads , or at the worst squatting on some moorland or on the desolated sheep-walks of Scotland . It is , to invert Mill ' s words , " not the niggardliness of nature but the injustice of society , that is the cause of the penalty attached to over population . " An engine for commencing the extension of concert , I have already pointed out in a genuine Poor Law .

      Meanwhile , the book of Malthus is not a gospel . We have not yet attained that wisdom which shall justify us in repealing the instinct that God has given us for our guidance in harmony with our other faculties . And meanwhile the acquisition of time is in itself of substantive importance ; for , if checks should ultimately be needed , time gained affords the only hope of discovering that which we certainly have not yet discovered , towards which we have not yet obtained even the smallest clue , a thing as yet to us wholly unimaginable , and mocked only by the ghastly

      nightmares of political ceconomy in its dreamsthe true principle of a check according to our nature and our destiny . Hitherto the improvements invented for us by oeconomists have not pointed to any practicable or exalted millennium . Rather than a blue-stocking millennium , or a thousand years of the Kingdom of a hypocritical " Moral Restraint , " let me , for one , having a choice to express , go back to the check of the Middle Ages , adventurous war ; or forward , to the euthanasia of our race—to a repose in divine obedience within this present stratum of alluvial deposit , beneath the

      footsteps of some newer and higher race , which then shall walk the earth where we have sunned ourselves . Let high motives uphold our life even unto the portal of that death which has no terrors for a stedfast and simple faith . With all the warmth of life upon me , in the full light of hope and love , I say that I face with less dismay , the idea that our kind may follow in the flesh to the tomb o ( extinct races , than the attempt to palter with the general laws of nature and of the God of nature . Let those laws be our guide—let , us labour to extinguish the only evils which have a real existence , the contradictions to those laws which cannot

      contradict themselves ; and to set up the- only stable laws for society , laws based Upon the laws of Cod as revealed in his creation . So , my dear Erasmus , shall we work together for the happiness of our kind ; and in that faith I say—not "Malthus ineauwhilo "—not Malthus oven for a day . Kver your ufluctionatc , Thohnton Hunt .

      14 Cd* Jteafre*. [Saturday,

      14 CD * jteafre * . [ Saturday ,

      Xihtatuxt.

      Xihtatuxt .

      Critics Are Not The Legislators, But The...

      Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret ana try to enforce them . — Edinburgh fiettiew *

      Among The Changes Which Every Successive...

      Among the changes which every successive generation brings with it into Literature , we may notice a constant enerease of familiarity accompanying a constant decrease of indelicacy—thus , in our time , we are tolerant of slang , but intolerant of anything resembling indecency . The puriets of former days were sensitive enough to all departures from the true " elevated " style , yet they threw words into their pages which our decent generation dare not even hint at ; and many an ancient aunt of our day uses , without misgiving , terms which astound their

      nephews . Then , again , what is decorous enough in Paris , Stockholm , or Vienna , would be outrageous in London . We have heard things uttered at dinner-tables by highborn , highbred women abr 6 ad , ^ whichr ^ ii ^ poken ^ tt--home would have blanched the faces of the guests with a horror almost as great as that which disturbed the feast of Belshazzar . While , if the reports of travellers are to be trusted , we are as outrageous to American susceptibility as the French and Germans are to ours . Roacommon says : —

      " Immodest words admit of no defence : A want of decency ' a a want of sense . " But then comes the question , What w decency ? Is a leg decent , or must one only disclose the ankle ? Can a bosom be mentioned , or must it be muffled up to the neck ? Are French or Americans to settle our code ? There are critics thrown into a tremor if you write the word " voluptuous , " and as for " sensuality , " one would imagine the thing only existed in the most brutal natures by the manner in which the word is used . Such being the state of public purism , we scarcely know what significance to give to the report that Lord Holland ' s Memoirs are found "too improper" for publication , and must be suppressed ; or , at any rate , severely castigated . One would like to know who is to be the delicate arbiter ! Taking Swift ' s admirable definition of " a nice man—a man with nasty ideas , " we should suggest that some very prurient mind , with a proper reverence for " respectablity , " should be the man chosen . There is nothing like your hog for discovering filth .

      A Bishop can quote Scripture for his purposes None better than Charles James . In a Charge delivered at the Royal Chapel Whitehall , on Sunday week , to the candidates for holy orders , the Church and State Gazette informs the world , that he said " Of the highest office in the Church , the Apostle said , * He that desireth the office of a Bishop , desireth a good thing . ' " We have not the slightest difference with Charles James of London in his belief that it is a good thing—a very

      good thing—to be a Bishop . ! Six thousand a-year is a comfortable independence , and stimulates desires . But the Bishop , in his intense conviction of the excellence of his office , appears to have substituted that conviction for the very different notion of St . Paul , whom he misquotes ; the Apostle did not regard it at all in the light of a " good thing "; but said , " He that desireth the office of a Bishop , he desireth a good work . " Is it the work which our modern Bishops desire , or might one suppose itjto be the waves ?

      This Is Magazine Week. We Have Not Dutif...

      This is Magazine week . We have not dutifully read all that , lies inviting us , so that we must leave you to discover for yourselves whatever may be readable . Fraser wo have read , and , it is a charmingly varied number of fiction , criticism , po etry , anil politic *! . In the Freeman we welcome a Glasgow adherent to spiritualism , though it needs more definite statement of principled to find its audience . In the Westminster Review ( a more varied and literary number thau ufiual ) there is an eloquent paper on the . Battle of the Churches , wherein the writer forcibly wtatea the read conflict now going on-

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 4, 1851, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_04011851/page/14/